Golden brilliance flooded the arena, turning the stone tiers into a sea of blazing amber.
Three thousand spectators surged to their feet, their shouts shaking loose mortar from the high ceiling arches. Nobody looked at the smoke-stained stalls or the shattered clay crucibles anymore. Every eye in the house was pinned to the central testing pedestal, where Deacon Vane’s velvet box gleamed beneath a pillar of pure, radiant light.
Down in Stall 44, Kaelen Vance didn’t look at the light at all.
He cinched coarse hemp cord around both ends of his already-rolled straw mat, strapped the bundle across his willow hamper, and made sure his goose-down neck-pillow sat dry beneath the wicker lid. His shoulders felt stiff from sixty-eight hours of resting on cold flagstones. The vinegar smell on his wool blanket had dried into a crusty tang, but it had kept Orson’s sulfur fumes out of his lungs.
If they take more than five minutes to sign the clearance paper, I’m billing the front desk for tea, Kaelen thought. A man can only take so much cheering before his ears start to ring.
He tapped the cork of his bamboo water bottle with a thumb, making sure the seal held tight. Beside his boot, his hookless bamboo fishing rod rested against an empty coal bin.
