Noll Vey stood on the lower basalt ledge above the cistern, his senses running down the stone conduits into the heart of Mere.
Through the fifth brass boundary token tucked in Reeve Dena Holt’s sheepskin collar, and the fourth token in Cale’s wool coat, the sounds of the town came up the hill like gravel through a tin chute. Down at the Survey House on the corner of High Street and Weaver’s Lane, cold rain was turning the gutter slates black. Outside the double oak doors of the Crown archive, two March Ledger bailiffs in greaves and boiled leather stood with their halberds crossed across the threshold.
“The doors remain barred by executive order of the Lord Auditor,” the senior bailiff barked. His voice was gravelly and sharp with morning tea. “No municipal officer enters without a signed military docket from camp headquarters.”
“I am not entering by military docket, Sergeant Corve,” Reeve Dena Holt said. Her voice did not rise. It had the steady, flat scrape of an iron shovel on frozen dung. “I am entering under the seventy-fourth provision of the Municipal Fire Ordinances of the Borough of Mere, ratified by Duke Alden’s council one hundred and twelve years before your March Ledger set up an inkpot in this valley.”
