In the cramped, cedar-scented heat of the sapper drift beneath Stall Four, the yellow beam of Jon Hale’s bull’s-eye lantern cut across the unrolled vellum of Dispatch Forty-Four. Above their heads, the four tallow-greased oak shims Alden Bram had driven beneath the stall’s main sleeper-beam held the stable floor dead silent, while in front of the granite cellar pier, Senior Guard Keld knelt in three inches of grey river-silt with his four-pound iron pick resting across his plated thigh.
Around the veteran sergeant’s broad shoulders, the pale golden aura of Sworn Duty still flickered like a candle caught in a cellar draft—brightening whenever Keld forced his mind back to twenty years of Chancellery obedience, then dimming at the edges where the split white wax of the magnesium fuse-cord lay exposed in his left gauntlet.
“Read Section Three aloud, Sergeant,” Lady Signe Lorr commanded. The Travelling Magistrate of the First Chamber stood bent beneath the four-foot pine head-trees with her gold chain of office gleaming against her dark blue velvet robe and the split, blood-crusted lead cylinder (#13) held steady in her left hand. “Read the exact words under the First War Chamber’s vermilion eagle, and tell this court whether you are digging a quarantine drain.”
