The morning air in the market square was thick with the smell of wet straw, wood-ash, and horse manure.
The municipal square of Harth was not paved with imperial marble; it was a broad expanse of packed river gravel, crossed by timber drainage gutters that directed the spring runoff toward the lower canal. At the west gate, two heavy baggage wagons painted in the dark slate-gray of the High Assize stood with their draught teams unhitched, their iron-banded chests being unloaded by four municipal draymen under the supervision of the town bailiff. The horses—stout, mud-splattered roan geldings from the western post-stations—stood with their heads down, blowing gray plumes of steam into the damp Flood Month morning.
Beside the second wagon, standing upon the clean wooden step of her traveling carriage, was Lady Signe Lorr.
She was thirty-four years old, dressed in the dark wool traveling cloak and severe white lawn collar of an imperial magistrate. Her auburn hair was bound in a tight braided coil beneath a stiff black velvet cap, and her steel-rimmed spectacles were balanced precariously on the bridge of her aristocratic nose. In her left hand she held a thick leather-bound bill of lading; in her right, an iron-gall quill poised over the parchment to check off the judicial seal boxes as the porters hauled them down.
