The timber of the River Lantern shuddered as Senior Guard Keld slammed the iron-shod butt of his halberd against the heavy oak front door below.
“Sir Cael!” Keld’s voice bellowed through the chimney flue, raw and hoarse from forty miles of riding through freezing marsh fog. “The north picket is broken! The Ash Host cavalry took the ferry crossing forty minutes ago! If you are breathing, Captain, come down to the gravel, or we fire the thatch to draw the wolves!”
In the second-floor bedchamber, the quill in Sir Cael Ardent’s hand remained suspended an inch above the fourth red seal.
A single droplet of black ink gathered at the steel nib. It hung there, swelling under the pull of the earth, before dropping onto the white vellum of the Tripartite Petition with a soft, final spatter.
Jon Hale watched the soldier’s eyes.
The wild, weeping grief that had wracked Cael during the night had receded, but it had not been replaced by the dull, mechanical numbness of the imperial matrix. His eyes were wide, clear, and blazing with the terrible, lucid agony of a commander who saw the entire board laid bare before him.
Through the eastern casement, the mist over the river was shredding under the pale morning sun. Beyond the willows, upon the distant northern ridge two leagues away, thin black columns of smoke rose into the white sky—the outlying farmsteads along the marsh dyke were burning.
