The acoustic baffles caught the silence and swallowed it whole.
In the drift, nothing moved save the faint, curling drift of lantern smoke forty paces behind Noll’s back. Through the inspection glass, Lord Auditor Orin Vane sat with the serene composure of an apothecary who had weighed out an exact dose of arsenic and was waiting for the patient to swallow the spoon.
When Noll did not speak, Vane reached into an ebony folio case resting on the side table of his field pavilion. He produced a second document—not heavy vellum this time, but a thin sheet of fine rag paper covered in minute, exquisite architectural schematics, colored in washes of cobalt ink and vermilion chalk.
Vane held it up to the inspection glass.
“I am not an unfeeling man, Master Vey,” Vane said softly. “The state requires precision, yes, but those who design policy must also understand the private grievances of the governed. Consider this specification sheet.”
Noll’s gaze moved over the drawing. It showed a human anatomical frame rendered with mechanical precision: the delicate curves of ribs, the interlocking network of tendons, the branching pathways of blood vessels mapped out alongside alchemical conduits of gold foil and spun glass. Across the bottom of the sheet, in a hand Noll recognized with a jolt of recognition, were the sharp, angular notes of Ossa Flint, written during her earliest months of research into core transference.
