Fen’s hands always wanted to shake before a door opened; they only steadied once there was a pulse under his fingers.
Walking down the slick cobbles toward the river bridge with Rella the apothecary stumping along at his left shoulder and Soldier Joss marching two paces ahead in a patched regimental greatcoat, Fen kept both thumbs hooked inside the leather strap of his medical satchel so the Survey sentries on the rooftops would not see his knuckles twitch. The rain had turned to a fine, sleety mist that clung to the red-bordered quarantine posters pasted across every shuttered shopfront on the high street.
At the stone road-guardhouse beside the broken lower bridge, four regular infantrymen in the grey-and-iron coats of Captain Arda Dorn’s company stood under the dripping eaves with their pikes grounded. Across the mud lane, two Survey House bailiffs in oiled leather capes leaned against a locked wagon-shed, watching the guardhouse door with narrow, expectant eyes.
Captain Arda Dorn met Fen on the stone threshold. She wore her service breastplate dulled with lampblack and grease against the wet, her dark hair braided tight beneath a plain iron helmet. She looked tired—the deep, grey-socketed weariness of an officer who had spent forty-eight hours reading orders she hated and obeying only the exact inches the law forced upon her.
