The final hour before midnight was marked not by bells, but by the slow, dying sputter of the sheep fat lamp on the corner of the bindery bench.
Across the room, Mira slept on the bed of calfskin boards. She was wrapped in Brother Ren’s dry wool mantle. Her breathing was rhythmic, deep, and peaceful, the crystal-clear chime inside her chest muffled by the heavy folds of cloth, sounding like distant wind chimes heard through a closed shutter. Beside her cot, Brother Ren sat cross-legged on the stone flags. His eyes closed in was silent contemplation, his scarred lips moving without sound as he kept his endless, penitent vigil over her sleep.
Near the doorway, Lord Ren and the Coward were working in tense, whispered coordination. The Emperor used a grease-rag to oil the axles of the iron hand-trolley. Meanwhile, the Coward tested the tension of six heavy forged chains, lashing two fifty-pound cast-iron book-presses across the trolley’s flatbed to build an emergency mobile barricade for the stairwell.
At the far end of the long oak workbench, isolated in a pool of dim yellow wick-light, Ren Vale sat across from Master Ren.
Between them lay a fresh sheet of heavy, sixty-pound rag paper—clean, unwritten, and smelling of dried river reeds and starch. Beside the paper stood an open fine china dish of packed dark oak-ink, an agate burnisher, and Master Ren’s dark rock tablet.
