The western stacks of Tier Five were older, narrower, and far more claustrophobic than the town avenues they had left behind.
Here lay the Provincial Genealogy and Census Registries—thousands of floor-to-ceiling cubicles built from black bog-oak that had warped over three hundred years of underground humidity. The aisles were scarcely four feet wide, the overhead timber floor beams bowing under the crushing weight of hundreds of thousands of family trees, baptismal scrolls, and inheritance charters. everyone could feel the smell of moldering sheepskin and the sharp, stone reek of mouse poison scattered behind the baseboards.
Behind them, the shouts of the Second Erasure Cohort echoed through the bookstacks like the barking of hunting hounds.
“They turned into the western grid!” a judge roared, the metal grating of his breathing mask grille shaking through the oak uprights. “Seal the northern cross-vault! Deploy the air-powered nail-guns! If the girl’s arm is hit, the crystal will shatter under moving shock!”
Lord Ren marched at the front of their column. His blackened iron breastplate scraped against the narrow shelves, his hand resting on the handle of his heavy iron shear. “They have thirty men in pursuit. They’re attempting to herd us into the dead-end of the western boundary wall. A classic net-and-hammer maneuver.”
