The oak door of the bakehouse banged open with enough violence to drive the latch pin deep into the plaster wall.
Two watchmen in leather jacks entered first, dragging a man between them by the collar of his fur-trimmed velvet overcoat. His knees scraped across the threshold, his wool stockings leaving dark trails of garden mud and grease across the scrubbed flagstones. Behind them came Alden Bram, his face like a storm cloud over the hills, carrying a heavy, blackened object under his arm wrapped in coarse sacking.
With a grunt of disgust, the watchmen released their grip. Vintner Vannic Dorr hit the floor in a heap before the flour bins, his round, soft face pale as curd, his fat fingers clutching at his torn lace cravat.
“Get up, Vannic,” Bram spat, stepping past the shivering merchant.
Bram reached the pine table where Jon Hale and Master of Masons Marris Gault sat over the defense slates. With a heavy, metallic clang that made the pewter inkstand jump, Bram dropped his burden onto the bare wood. The sacking fell away, revealing a three-foot length of ruptured lead piping. The metal was thick as a man’s wrist, twisted like a pulled tooth, its flared end roughly sawn and soldered with irregular blobs of gray zinc.
