Ossa Flint walked back into the witness circle with her heavy work boots clicking against the flagstones, her blackened leather apron stiff with cold tallow and iron dust. She did not look at Lord Auditor Vane, and she did not look at the glowing architectural projections in the dome above. She stopped before the iron rail, rested her thick, calloused hands on the cold bar, and faced Master Serit.
“State your calibration work for the court, Master Flint,” Cale said from behind his recording lectern, his pen poised above the entry sheet.
“Three weeks before the fire,” Ossa said, her raspy voice cutting through the damp chill of the amphitheater. “I was dispatched from the Survey House workshop with two apprentices, three mules, and eight crates of red collar-seal tiles. My orders were signed by Auditor Vane’s confidential secretary. I was instructed to enter the cellar of the ruined watch-fort above Mere, clear the rubble down to the foundation bedrock, and set a Seed-rank claim-collar ring into the stone.”
She raised her left hand, pointing a thick thumb toward the floor flags beneath Noll’s granite clamps.
“That ring right there,” Ossa said. “Forty-two inches in diameter, sixteen copper-inlaid boundary stones, and a central blue receiver facet. I calibrated the frequency to accept a mortal soul under violent pressure. When a dying man bleeds onto that central facet, the core drinks his breath, his memories, and his habit of thought, turning his consciousness into the governing anchor for the stone.”
