The hardest part of fighting the Master Oath-Silver Register Core was that it did not feel like an enemy at all. It felt like four hours of uninterrupted sleep in a warm bed after a week of counting wet turnips in the rain.
Under Cale’s blistered knuckles, the twelve-inch iron desk ruler hummed like a plucked harp wire. Every vibration climbing through the cold iron into his wrists carried the same gentle, bureaucratic reassurance: You are tired, Master Clerk. You copied four hundred entries by bad tallow light in the tenth month. The King’s sign-manual and the Keeper’s privy seal were on Form Fourteen-B all along. Lift the ruler, close the folder, and put your head down on your sleeve.
“No,” Cale croaked, leaning his breastbone harder against the sloped reading desk. Prit, perched on the slate stool beside the inkpot to brace the parchment, had begun to sway on his small bone heels as oath-silver resonance flooded up through the rag paper. Cale nudged the imp’s elbow, rattling Prit back into alertness, and dragged the heavy leather-bound Book of Witness closer. “I was at the timber annex in the fourth month. I counted pine logs for the boom. There was no regency courier.”
