The caribou-bone stylus continued to hum against the gold rim of the Returner Seal, casting long, trembling shadows across the ceiling joists of the back parlor. The four gold bars hung unmoving in the air above Cael Ardent’s breast, their amber glow washing the fatigue from his hollow cheeks, painting him in the false grandeur of an imperial tomb.
“Harth...” Cael whispered, his dry tongue searching along his cracked lower lip. His voice had lost its mechanical edge, replaced by a strange, fragile cadence, like a child reciting a prayer learned by rote. “I was seventeen. The muster sergeant took thirty boys from the upper valley. We marched down through the gorge before the river froze.”
Jon Hale leaned forward across the hoop-iron boundary, resting his hands on his apron. “Where did they quarter you, Cael? When you reached this village, where did you sleep?”
“The old timber garrison,” Cael said without hesitation. His eyes remained fixed upon the middle distance, staring through Jon toward a landscape that seemed painted upon the whitewashed cellar wall. “Beside the North Gate. The third company had the loft above the hay barn. The floorboards smelled of dried timothy and horse liniment.”
Lady Signe Lorr remained standing by her writing desk, her pen poised, her gray eyes watchful behind her round glass lenses. “The North Garrison was decommissioned twenty-eight years ago,” she noted softly, her tone quiet so as not to shatter the soldier’s trance. “The municipal rolls record that it served as an…
