Crouched beneath the rough-hewn pine ceiling boards of the sapper drift with wet river-sand soaking into the hem of her dark blue velvet robes, Travelling Magistrate Lady Signe Lorr did not flinch from the hardened steel point of the four-pound boarding pick hovering three feet from her throat.
She had spent twelve years in the high circuit courts of the realm examining hardened provost sergeants, border captains, and military executioners. She knew that a veteran non-commissioned officer like Senior Guard Keld—a man of forty-two who kept his blued-steel plate spotless and signed hay vouchers to the penny—did not dig in the dark out of personal malice. He dug because the chain of command was the only moral compass he had ever been permitted to hold. And she knew that if you struck at such a man with a weapon, his Sworn Duty enchantment would harden like quenched iron; if you struck him with the written statute of the court that issued his oath, the weapon in his hands had nowhere to bite.
“Lower your pick two inches from the timber prop, Senior Guard Keld, and state your service serial and warrant authority for the High Assize record,” Signe commanded, her crisp courtroom voice cutting through the sulfur-stink of the tunnel as if they stood on the marble floor of the First Chamber in the capital.
