The ink on Sella Rusk’s calfskin license looked like a seawall after a hard northeast gale: the outer sandspit was gone beneath the waves, yet the stone groin where the three linen pages touched the vellum stood dry, black, and immovable.
For two full minutes nobody around the hearth bench dared move a finger, as if lifting an elbow might let Lord Auditor Vane’s distant stylus slip back under the paper. Down at the doorway to the side passage, Renn leaned on his ash crutch with his pale crystal leg braced against the jamb, while beside him Sergeant Berr stood at quiet attention, his dead bone fingers hooked into the brass-buckled belt of his rotted uniform coat.
“Read them out,” Noll Vey said softly from his niche in the western wall.
Cale looked up, his ink-smudged thumb hovering over the corner of Fen’s sheet. “Read them aloud, Noll? You said yourself we mustn’t add a core claim to the paper.”
“I’m not touching a syllable with core force,” Noll replied, keeping his blue stone banked to a steady, watchful glow. “A written page has weight when the writer signs it. In any court or tavern I ever saw, it has twice the weight when the house hears it read in the open and nods that the writer didn’t lie. Read them out, Cale. Plain clerk’s voice. No flourishes.”
