Lady Signe Lorr set her portable brass inkhorn on the corner of the pine trestle and unrolled the heavy vellum scroll of the Bound Common Charter across the foot of Sir Cael Ardent’s pallet. Though the hem of her blue velvet robe was stiff with dried river silt and her left forearm wore a fresh linen bandage from the skirmish at the stable gate, her posture remained as upright as if she were presiding over the high bench in the capital’s winter assize. In her right hand she held Object #11—the carved ivory Bone Stylus that Jon had claimed in the eighth return, its tip worn smooth by centuries of tracing imperial and municipal seals.
“By the authority vested in the Travelling Magistracy of the High Assize,” Signe said, her clear, measured voice cutting through the drum of rain on the parlor shutters and the low, metallic thrum rising through the floorboards, “I open the fourth and final custody record of the River Lantern Inn, in the municipal parish of Harth, on the third day of the thirteenth witnessed cycle.”
On the narrow bed, Cael Ardent lay with his head propped on a folded horse-blanket, his gray face slick with sweat as Elin held a vinegar-soaked pad against the bleeding margin of his charred right shoulder. At the sound of the magistrate’s formal preamble, the knight’s surviving left hand tightened on the coarse wool sheet, but he did not interrupt.
