The Great Hall of Fort Karst smelled of damp hearth-smoke, stale animal fat, and dried blood.
A single wrought-iron fire bowl sputtered in the center of the flat stone slab floor. It cast jagged amber shadows across the vaulted timber ceiling. General Varek Brand was bound with heavy logging chains to the central granite pillar that supported the keep’s upper guard post quarters. His broken legs were propped awkwardly upon a sack of dried turnip chaff, his blackened dragon-scale armor unbuckled and cast aside into a heap of dented metal by the hearth.
Before him stood a frame stand table of rough-hewn pine.
Upon that table lay the contents of the legate’s brass-bound dispatch satchel. Twenty-two rolled thick parchment scrolls, four iron cylinders stamped with the royal wyvern seal, three bundles of promissory notes wrapped in waxed twine. A pocket-sized personal diary bound in calfskin.
Vane Vale stood at the left side of the table. His gold-rimmed pince-nez was balanced delicately upon the bridge of his narrow nose. His quill scratched across a blank ledger page with sharp, careful clicks, his amber Audit-Sight flaring behind his glasses whenever his pale fingers touched a royal seal.
At the center of the table stood Ren Prime, his mammoth-bone awl poised like a razor knife above a cracked wafer of scarlet sealing wax.
