Jon Hale took both lead cylinders—the bloodstained tube from the weir and its pristine twin from this morning’s courier strap—and tucked them side by side into the deep inner pocket of his leather apron. Down in the straw beneath the bay gelding’s hind fetlocks, the torn bronze badge of the Imperial Express Post lay half-buried in wet dung where the horse’s iron shoe had pressed it flat.
“Pick up the bronze, Tobin,” Jon said, nodding toward the straw. “Not to put it back on your coat. If one of Captain Dain’s gate corporals or a royal outrider walks through this stable at mid-morning and spots a King’s post badge trampled in the muck, they will drag the hay-loft for a murdered courier before noon. Drop it into the grease-pot under the wagon bench where no eye can find it.”
Tobin bent down, pinched the bent bronze oval out of the straw with two fingers as if picking up a dead rat by the tail, and walked to the rear corner of the barn where the axle-tallow bucket hung beneath the carpenter’s bench. He pushed the badge all the way to the bottom of the stiff black lard and wiped his fingers clean on a handful of dry wood shavings.
