Ten minutes after Captain Dain’s horn sounded the alarm along the south wall, the outer oak doors of the bathhouse slammed back a second time.
Sir Cael Ardent strode into the tepidarium with his ancestral greatsword half-drawn in its scabbard and Lady Signe Lorr two paces behind him, her dark magistrate’s cloak pinned up out of the street mud. Behind them in the vestibule, four armed townsmen from the market patrol barred the doorway with crossed pikes, holding back the crowd of anxious lantern-bearers who had gathered in South Lane at the sound of the watch horn.
Cael stopped three paces from the sunken warming basin.
The steam had cleared enough now for the yellow glow of Sister Oda’s horn lantern and Dain’s wall-torches to reflect cleanly off the dark red water. Warden Brecht’s gray-shirted shoulders bobbed slightly against the limestone neck-rest, his severed throat gaping dark beneath his chin and his manacled hands resting pale on the submerged cedar bench.
For five full heartbeats Cael did not speak. The fierce, commanding momentum that had carried him down the lane from the River Lantern drained out of his posture, leaving his broad shoulders rigid beneath his steel pauldrons. His jaw clenched so hard that the muscle along his scarred cheek jumped twice.
