The carbon slate was cold in Cale’s hands, smelling of stale lamp soot, damp cellar stone, and the sharp vinegar-water he had used to preserve the greasy transfer three nights ago.
Cale adjusted his cuffs, ignoring the wet black ink that stained his frayed linen bands, and stepped up to the clerk’s lectern in the center of the witness ring. For three years in the Survey House at Mere, his reflex whenever Lord Auditor Orin Vane entered a room had been to drop his chin, fix his eyes on the pine floorboards, and wait for the senior man to pass. He had learned the art of becoming furniture: dipping pens when spoken to, carrying filing boxes with silent shoes, and blotting ink as though his own breath were an intrusion upon the state’s neat arithmetic.
He did not look at his shoes now. He looked straight across the pine lectern at the man who had signed his junior appointment warrant.
“Municipal Order 44-B,” Cale read aloud, his voice starting with a dry, nervous hitch before settling into the clear, mechanical rhythm of a trained court transcriber. “Dated the eighteenth day of the autumn equinox, twelve years past. Issued from the District Survey Office at Oakhaven, bearing the red wax seal of Deputy Surveyor Orin Vane.”
