“Halt your file at the curb, Senior Guard Keld,” Lady Signe Lorr said.
Her voice did not carry the theatrical boom of a military herald; it cut across the wet market square with the flat, unmistakable authority of a sitting judge of the First Chamber calling a bailiff to order in the royal courts at the capital.
Senior Guard Keld’s iron-shod boot stopped six inches from the bottom granite step of the River Lantern porch. Behind his lowered sallet visor, the veteran non-commissioned officer blinked at the heavy gold collar of the High Assize gleaming over Signe’s dark blue velvet shoulders—the very court whose blue wax counter-seal sat at the bottom of Brecht’s warrant. Conditioned by twenty years of Chancellery service to obey the chain of judicial verification, Keld held his rawhide mallet suspended at his hip and looked back over his shoulder toward the market cross.
Warden Brecht stepped down from the lowest octagonal step of the cross, his silver-headed cane clicking once against the cobbles as he offered Signe a measured, courtly inclination of his head.
“Magistrate Lorr,” Brecht said, his voice smooth as oiled silk. “We had understood from the post-registers at Northpass that your circuit audit of the valley tax rolls was concluded last week. While the Chancellery is always honored by the presence of a jurist from the First Chamber, I must remind Your Honour that my Special Provost Commission bears a later date-stamp than your circuit patent and operates under Sovereign Emergency Statute Four…
