The iron tip of Ossa Flint’s ash walking stick struck the limestone flags of the well with a dry, hollow thud that cut through the murmuring benches.
Noll Vey turned his stone head toward the old artificer as she hobbled to the edge of the witness rail. Her right hand reached up to touch the scarred rim of her empty left eye socket—the puckered, gray flesh where she had ground her own glass lens into powder two days ago in the deep drift of the silver mine to sever the chorus circuit before it burned twelve miners alive.
“Listen to me, Master Vane,” Ossa said, her raspy voice vibrating in the quiet amphitheater. “And listen well, you six boys sitting up there in your silver braid. Because I am the one who cut the threads for those discs, and I know what is inside the silver.”
On the upper tier, Major Brek kept his chin pressed down against his chest, his large hands trembling against his compass box. Beside him, Captain Lira did not take her fingers from the edge of her unhooked collar, her eyes fixed on the old woman with a mixture of terror and desperate hope.
“I built eighteen resonant oath-tokens for the March Ledger forty months ago,” Ossa said, addressing the royal envoy and the town delegates on the lower benches. “Twelve of them were crude, coarse-cast discs intended for the mine floor—thick chunks of low-grade silver that answered to the buried chorus bell in the…
