Outside in the rain-swept stable yard, Sir Cael Ardent’s low, clipped voice sounded under the garret eaves as he roused Corporal Morvath and the four off-duty Oath Guards to grease the axles of the hand-drays.
Inside the bolted taproom of the River Lantern Inn, the air was quiet, warm with the banked beech-coals of the hearth, and still ringed by the steady blue margin of Jon Hale’s Honest Measure.
Standing at the head of the oak command table—with Jon, Elin, and Alden Bram before her, and fifty-four-year-old Sister Oda stepping quietly through the kitchen archway with a dry linen towel over her arm—Lady Signe Lorr drew from the inner pocket of her black wool court gown the folded parchment writ that connected her office to the War Ministry’s field command.
It was a double-leaf vellum commission issued twelve days ago by the Joint Chancellery Tribunal in the capital. At the bottom of the sheet hung two silk ribbons: on the left, the black-and-white braided silk cord of the High Assize Bench; on the right, linked to it by a shared disk of scarlet War Ministry wax, the crimson-and-gold military ribbon binding the civil observer to Field Warden Brecht’s martial jurisdiction.
