The black spirit-steed’s hooves struck the southern bridge cobbles with rhythmic iron clatter.
Scout Crow-Nine sat rigidly in his high saddle. His raven-steel armor was polished to an oily sheen, bearing the etched talons of the Imperial Censorate.
From his pommel fluttered the black triangular pennant of an Inquisitor’s vanguard.
Beneath his helmet, his cold eyes scanned the quiet riverfront. In his right gauntlet, he gripped an alchemical testing prism crafted from frosted quartz.
“A border market that produces ringed medicine,” Crow-Nine murmured to himself, his voice muffled by his iron faceplate. “Inquisitor Thorne-Crow does not believe in coincidences. If there is celestial pill-fire in this town, the Empire will claim it.”
He looked toward the distant nine-story tower rising above the gray tile roofs.
For three years, the Censorate had investigated irregular pill shipments throughout the southern river valleys. Rumors of zero-sediment pills had reached the imperial capital, alarming the Grand Regent and the Four Great Pill Houses.
The monopoly on clean medicine belonged exclusively to the imperial court. Any rogue alchemist producing pure pills without imperial licensing was branded an illegal heretic.
