The pulse did not feel like a cannon shot. It felt like a warm flatiron passed smoothly over a creased linen shirt, pressing every wrinkle out of the cloth whether the shirt belonged to the laundress or not.
Noll Vey strode to the southern arrow slit of the Grand Hall, his stone boots thudding on the flagstones, and pushed his awareness outward along the Dominion ring that linked the fort’s foundations to the town well and the lower pass road.
Beside him, Prit scrambled up onto the window embrasure with his slate held tight against his ribs, while Cale, Sella Rusk, and Tessa Dene hurried over from the clerk’s table.
“That’s Anchor Two,” Cale said, his face paling behind his spectacles as the faint, metallic hum vibrated through the window sill into their fingertips. “The Master Oath-Silver Register Core from the lower Survey vault. I knew Vane’s engineers had unbolted the floor brackets before we brought Lady Serit out through the grain hatch, but that vault core weighs nine hundred pounds with its lead shielding! He shouldn’t be able to key it without the building’s foundation grounding!”
“He didn’t bring the lead shielding,” Prit said grimly, his hollow eyes fixed on the southern ridge where the white roof of the army’s main customs tent gleamed beside the river road. “Feel the leakage in the stone? He has mounted the register core inside an unshielded brass-and-oak portable chassis and grounded it directly into the iron tires of the army charter wagon…
