The snap of the sixth clasp was quiet, no louder than a dry hazel twig snapping beneath an autumn heel, but the sound traveled through the limestone floor flags like a tremor from a deep mountain fault.
Marshal Kett drew the silver torque from beneath his stiff wool collar. For thirty winters, that slender band of royal oath-metal had warmed against his neck, carrying the weight of five hundred night watches, fifty forced marches through border slush, and every casualty roll he had ever delivered to a grieving parish. The center medallion pulsed with a faint, feverish violet phosphorescence—the cold, artificial fire of the Regency’s private purse that had held his command captive to an auditor’s ledger.
The old field commander turned away from the inner marble circle where Edren Dene, Renn, and Maura stood in quiet dignity. He walked with measured, unhurried strides toward the clerk’s oak table, his iron-studded boots clicking against the flagstones in a slow, solemn cadence.
At the witness balustrade, Noll Vey leaned his single stone arm against the smooth coping stone. Through his Dominion stone-sight, he felt the eight thousand soldiers waiting in the muddy trenches above, unaware that their collective fate was being settled upon a grounded iron plate sixty feet beneath the limestone.
