The black coach drew up in the center of the market square between the iron well and the Survey House steps, its four bay horses blowing clouds of steam into the cold November air while the postilion jumped down to unfold the iron footboard.
Noll Vey took three deliberate, grinding steps backward until his flat limestone heels stood ten full paces clear of the nearest lead horse. Horses had sensible noses; they disliked walking statues that smelled of cellar lime and wet quarry dust, and Noll had no intention of giving Lord Auditor Orin Vane the satisfaction of watching a royal team bolt across the cobbles before the door opened.
Out of the coach stepped a woman of sixty in a dark travelling pelisse of oiled broadcloth, her iron-grey hair pinned beneath a plain velvet riding cap and her boots caked with red clay from the lowland roads three hundred miles south. She did not wait for the postilion’s elbow. Instead, she carried chained to her own left wrist by a braided steel link a square iron dispatch case lined at the seams with crimson velvet—the traveling housing of the Great Seal of Orren.
“Master Serit,” Cale whispered from behind Tessa’s shoulder, his fingers tightening on his satchel strap. “Lady Serit of the Privy Seal. When I was a probationer in Greyford, she audited the Salt-Road custom-houses and sent two viscounts to the debtors’ tower before dinner. She hates messy books worse than Prit does.”
