Master Serit laid both hands flat on the brass corners of her Great Seal case. The bruised skin above her cuffs looked like winter plum rind against the dark leather, and her fingers did not tremble at all as she unlatched the twin catches.
Inside the velvet-lined box sat the heavy silver-and-loadstone matrix of the Royal Envoy’s Great Seal—the same seal Captain Arda Dorn had carried through the rain in a greased saddlebag while Serit was being held in the Survey House cellar.
“Let us be entirely clear about what this matrix can and cannot do before we ask a single soldier to trust it,” Serit said. Her voice had lost the polished court cadence she had brought up the northern road two weeks ago; the archive basement had scraped it down to dry timber. “Under the Charter of the Seven Founding Dukes, an envoy bearing the Great Seal holds plenary authority to suspend any border warrant when the king’s person is more than ten days’ ride distant and immediate ruin threatens a royal settlement.”
“Vane will say the king countersigned his emergency regency,” Tessa Dene said from the workbench bench, her thumb testing the point of an iron nail she had pulled from her apron pocket. “He told the camp delegates yesterday that his portable register speaks with the direct voice of the throne.”
