The single breath that opened the royal seat’s presumption barrier felt, to Noll Vey’s strained awareness, like the brief, breathless pause between the flash of lightning and the hammer of thunder.
Up at the witness rail, the air in the Hall of Witness seemed to turn transparent. The violent torque that had been wringing Noll’s blue claim-core for an hour suddenly halted, suspended in mid-twist. Tessa Dene’s palms remained locked against the cold river-shale token on the wood, her knuckles white, her brow damp with sweat, but the savage downward suction from the foundation channels abruptly died away.
For the duration of one heartbeat, the ancient dynastic engine below hung completely defenseless.
Down in the vault, thirty feet beneath the flagstones, Sergeant Berr stood upon the shattered basalt dais.
He had no left arm; the limb had been stripped to ash by the Traitor’s Gate. He had no living lungs, no beating heart, and no royal commission left to protect his memory. But he had his boots planted in the fractured stone of the hill, and in his right hand he held the notched, blackened iron blade he had drawn from the scabbard thirty winters ago.
“This is for the gate,” Berr rasped.
