The heavy oak door at the top of the side aisle swung shut behind Sella Rusk’s heels with a dull thump that shuddered through the limestone frames.
Inside the Hall of Witness, the silence she left behind was jittery and thin, like river ice when a wagon wheel cracks the middle of the crossing. Up in the military tiers, the remaining twenty-seven company delegates looked uneasily from the closed door down to the sunken witness ring, wondering whether they were the sensible men who had stayed to save their regiments or the fools who had waited too long to run. Down in the front row of the clinic bench, Fen sat with his canvas roll of clean linen bandages resting across his knees, his tired eyes tracking the nervous breathing of the young line lieutenants who had suddenly remembered their swords were locked in the outer antechamber.
On the second row of the Mere municipal bench, old Corin the woodcutter stood up, his axe-calloused hands twisting the brim of his wool cap until the seams strained.
“Clerk Cale!” Corin called down, his voice urgent and hoarse. “Don’t write that down as a refusal! Captain Marn was just hot under the collar—and Sella’s gone after them to talk sense into their boots. Mark the three companies down as ‘stepped out for a breather’ or ‘temporarily recessed,’ so when the rest of the camp reads the slate at noon, the roll looks solid!”
