The entry hall before the Chamber of Primordial Precedents was built of green-veined red stone. That dense fiery stone absorbed the lantern light and returned it as a dull, emerald murk.
Before them rose the bronze blast-doors, thirty feet tall and twelve inches thick, their surface rusted to the dark, velvety patina of an ancient coin. The doors had no keyholes, no handles, and no visible clockwork hinges. Across the top door beam above the portal, cut four inches deep into the red stone, ran a single line of massive calligraphy in the Primordial Lexicon of Khorat—the legalistic precursor to all contractual binding in the Grand Duchy.
Ren Vale stood five paces from the bronze, his ivory mammoth bone awl held lightly in his right hand.
He tilted his head back, his careful eyes tracing the shape of the characters. Even without formal schooling in the high academies, his seven years of repairing torn debt-scrolls and scraping fraudulent leases in Low-Khorat had given him an instinct for contractual stonework.
The stone carving read:
NONE SHALL ENTER SAVE THE SOVEREIGN High judge, WHOSE BREATH COMMANDS THE LAW.
Ren felt the dry, tight knot in his throat throb with phantom heat.
Whose breath commands the law.
