By one o’clock on the afternoon of the second day, the northeast drizzle had thickened into a cold, slanting autumn rain that turned the unpaved cart-tracks outside the west tollgate into troughs of churning red clay.
True to her word, Lady Signe Lorr had marched up to the North Bridge gatehouse at the stroke of nine in her full black Assize mantle, flanked by two parish bailiffs carrying her iron-bound chancery trunk. By half-past nine, she had impounded every military forage roll in Warden Brecht’s office under a formal Writ of Audit Verification, requiring Sir Cael Ardent and four of his six Oath Guards to stand by the gatehouse table while she cross-checked every bushel of oats and every bundle of palisade stakes against the county excise statute.
With the northern command post tied in legal knots half a mile upstream, Jon stood at the West Quay crossroad in his oiled leather drover’s coat with Master Mason Alden Bram at his left shoulder and the baker Dunstan Harl at his right.
Fifty paces ahead of them rose the West Quay Stone Granary—a grim, four-story rectangle of dark river granite wedged tightly between the twenty-foot drop of the dry aqueduct trough and the outer curtain wall. Above its double oak loading doors hung a sodden copy of Cael’s morning proclamation, its red military wax bleeding faint pink streaks down the whitewashed timber post.
