Sir Cael Ardent had left his blued steel breastplate and white rose surcoat upstairs in Room 4, wearing only a dark wool undertunic and linen breeches, yet he had not removed the high gold gorget buckled around his throat. Even at one in the morning, alone in a darkened tavern, the Returner kept the necrotic sore of the Bearer’s Seal locked behind gilded metal.
With a stub of mutton-tallow candle held in his left hand, Cael leaned over the open slant-lid of the publican’s desk. His right hand rested flat on the warped calfskin cover of the bound leather ledger (#7), while between his thumb and forefinger he held the Room 4 brass key (#4) alongside the water-stained Harvest Month stone-box receipt that had been pinned to the noon invoice.
Jon waited two breaths in the shadow of the kitchen archway, watching what Cael was doing to the receipt.
The knight had touched the flattened gold edge of his collar to the brass key bow, trying to force his Returner interface to read the provenance of the one-copper deposit slip. Instead of gold imperial script answering his probe, however, the Last Guest trust bound into the Room 4 brass key projected a pale, steady margin of blue municipal foundation text across the brittle hemp paper—visible both to Cael’s eyes and to Jon’s across the counter:
