The bolt struck the door beside Jora’s head and stayed there, trembling.
For an instant Iven saw its feathers against the painted price of a wagon turn. Then Jora was down behind the stone trough and he was moving toward the office wall, plate raised, while the market behind them broke into screams.
“Inside!” he shouted to the nearest stall keeper.
The woman dragged her daughter through the leather shop’s doorway. A basket overturned. Small brass buckles rolled into the gutter and lay shining there while everyone who might have picked them up ran past.
It was the morning of the four hundred and seventy-seventh day. Holt’s lower office had been closed when the first two guards arrived the evening before. They had watched its entrances overnight and sent for the authority to search it. Jora had come to serve that authority with the clerk who carried it.
Someone had answered from behind the shutters.
The clerk lay beside the trough, his paper case still clutched against his chest. Jora pulled him farther into cover by the back of his coat.
A second bolt struck the stone above them.
