The iron hinges of the culvert gate screeched as Tessa Dene threw her shoulder against the damp oak.
She came through the opening at a run, her boots spattered with yellow creek clay, her dark wool cloak dripping onto the flagged floor of the fort’s lower drainage gallery. Behind her, through the acoustic conduit that linked the town basin to the bedrock arches, Noll Vey could hear the distant, ugly roar of an angry crowd gathering in the market square half a mile down the mountain.
“Four circles have already shredded their credential sheets,” Tessa said, leaning both hands against her knees as she fought for breath in the cold draft. “Tomas the carter is standing by the chapel well with six teamsters, shouting that we sold their boys out to save our own skins. In twenty minutes, every delegate paper we signed this morning will be ashes in the river.”
Noll stood in the center of the vaulted gallery, his basalt frame motionless as a foundation pier. Prit was already at his side, his slate clutched under one arm, three stubs of chalk rattling in his wooden box.
“State the exact phrasing of the contagion, Tessa,” Prit said, his quill poised above the cedar frame. “An auditory panic always begins with a single legal distortion. What did Vane’s clerks tell them?”
