Kaelen snapped the sheepskin scroll shut before the carriage lantern could reveal another syllable of the text.
He pulled the braided crimson cord tight around the parchment and tied it into a double knot.
“Master Vance, wait,” Deacon Vane stammered from the coach step, his face pale in the yellow lantern light. “That was the coiled serpent. The Imperial Censorate only stamps recipes when an entire branch faces execution or monopoly seizure.”
“Then it sounds like a terrible bedtime story,” Kaelen said, tucking the rolled vellum under his left arm. “And reading bad stories gives me acid reflux.”
He stepped down onto the damp gravel of Narrow-Lantern Alley.
Beside the carriage wheel, Sera Thorne was already looping heavy hemp rope around Vulture-Claw Rawn’s wrists and ankles.
The fallen strike leader groaned, coughing up a mouthful of gravel and blood, but his shattered spirit-iron core kept him pinned flat to the dirt.
“His bones are still soft from the concussive wave,” Sera said, testing the knot with a sharp tug of her boot. “He won’t walk for three days. Do you want me to dump him in the river or hand him to the magistrate?”
