The steam from the shattered breathing mask hissed between them, thick with the choking smell of boiled copper, burning rosewater, and hot lamp oil.
Court guard-Captain Corvus Thorne filled the doorway of The Glass Pavilion, the iron plates of his lacquered armor dripping with melting sleet. His left eye was milky, blind, and motionless. But his right eye—black and sharp as a black glass point—was locked upon Ren Vale’s chest. The two-handed iron maul in his gauntlets hummed with dull, crimson light, the binding runes along its striking face pulsing with legal force.
Behind Thorne stood Master Notary Julian Voss. He grabbed his mangled, bandaged hand against his ermine collar. His face was mottled purple with rage and fear.
“Kill him, Thorne!” Voss snarled, his voice rising to an oily shriek. “He has assaulted a High Peer of the Synod! He has destroyed state medical rig! Shoot the guttersnipe where he stands!”
Ren didn’t move. He stood in the center of the mulberry carpet, his right arm supporting Mira’s unconscious, crystal-clear weight. His broken left collarbone flared with every shallow breath. It sent waves of nauseating fire down his ribs, but his spine remained rigid.
Beside him, Vane Vale stepped forward. The merchant rested both hands on his blackthorn cane, his torn velvet coat draped over his shoulders like a royal mantle, his manicured goatee tilted upward in supreme high-born disdain.
“On what legal power, Captain?” Vane asked smoothly.
Thorne didn’t blink. “Edict Four-Twelve. Summary execution of unlicensed contraband thieves resisting arrest.”
“Edict Four-Twelve,” Vane repeated, a cold smile touching his lips as his fingers flicked the brass beads of his pocket counting frame. Clack. Clack. “Promulgated under the minority of Grand Duke Alden, superseded sixty years ago by the Country Jurisprudence Accord of 688. Under Section Nine of that accord, an enforcement officer who executes a civilian within the boundaries of a chartered railway without presenting an attested Writ of Execution incurs immediate personal debt for all consequential commercial damages.”
Vane pointed his cane toward the choking figure of Lord Malakor in the emerald armchair.
“That old vulture is currently experiencing acute breathing failure,” Vane continued, his rhythm brisk, merciless, and terrifyingly precise. “His estate is capitalized at three million sovereigns, held under a testamentary trust that expires the second his heart ceases to beat. If you swing that maul in this compartment, Thorne, Malakor dies of sky shock before you finish the down-stroke. And under crown death-estate law, his heirs will sue the High court Contraband Division for the entirety of your pension, your family’s homestead in the West Reach. The very armor on your back.”
Thorne’s jaw tightened beneath the iron chinstrap of his helm. His gauntlets creaked on the maul’s ash-wood wooden handle, but the weapon didn’t go down.
For ten seconds, the only sound in the carriage was the wild ticking of the counting frame beads and the wheezing rattle of Lord Malakor’s throat.
“Words,” Voss spat, pushing past Thorne’s iron elbow, his eyes wild with desperation. “He’s an unlicensed pauper from the tanneries, Thorne! He has no standing! Look at the girl! She’s property of the High Spires! I hold the signed transfer charter!”
Voss reached into his stitched coat with his good left hand, whipping out the scarlet-sealed parchment. The delivery deed bearing Ren’s forged mark.
“Here is the deed!” Voss shouted, shaking the thick parchment in the air. “Attested by the Medical High court! Sealed in crimson wax! Title has passed to the House of Malakor!”
Ren looked at the parchment.
Then, with his free right hand, he reached into his apron pocket. Then he drew out the three sheets of Harker’s High court thick parchment he had inked over Garrow’s oilstone.
“Show me the tax stamp, Voss,” Ren said quietly.
The quietness of his voice cut through the room like a bone saw.
Voss blinked, his florid face stuttering. “What?”
“The tax stamp,” Ren repeated. He took half a pace forward, his scuffed cobbler’s boots crunching on the glass shards of the shattered liquid silver column. “Under the Lexicon of Binding, Chapter Four, Clause Eighteen: any contract conveying an animate living asset possessing a ringing sound hum in excess of three hundred cycles must carry a three-crown ad valorem duty stamp issued by the Provincial Board of Assay.”
Ren lifted the forged Sequestration Writ into the golden chandelier light.
“Your deed has the Notarial seal,” Ren continued, his silver-flecked grey eyes pinning Voss to the wall. “It has the Medical High court crest. But it doesn’t have the Assay stamp. Because if you had taken this transfer to the Board of Assay, they would have measured Mira’s deep ring, discovered that you were compounding artificial turning to stone accelerators, and stripped you of your robes for criminal vivisection.”
A bead of cold sweat broke along Voss’s receding hairline. It tracked down through his silver eyebrow.
“The deed is void ab initio,” Ren whispered. “It’s not a contract. It’s a confession.”
The careful audit registered with contractual care: Delivery Charter #419. Status: Void Ab Initio (Failure Of Lawful Duty Stamp). Counter-Writ: Attended Sequestration Warrant Active. Jurisdictional Override: 100% Country Primacy.
Thorne looked from Ren’s steady grey eyes down to Voss’s trembling parchment.
The court guard was an illiterate killer. But he had served the High court for twenty years. He knew the look of a notary caught in an audit. He knew that when an apprentice scribe started citing chapter and clause without glancing at a book, the ground beneath their boots had already dissolved into quicksand.
“Julian,” Thorne rumbled, his voice dropping into a dangerous, gravelly register. “Is the tax stamp on the file?”
“It... It’s in the supplementary ledger at the clinic!” Voss stammered, backing toward the shattered doorway. “A clerical oversight, Thorne! An office deferral! Kill them! The Synod will protect us!”
“The Synod protects investments, Julian,” Vane Vale said. He stepped into the space between the court guard and the notary. “The Synod doesn’t protect bankrupt flesh-peddlers whose cargo has just been decoupled on a public siding. Look around you, captain. This carriage is an unlisted dangerous zone. If you enforce an un-stamped deed, you become an accessory after the fact to unlicensed necromantic harvesting. That carries a penalty of twenty years on the sulfur galleys.”
Thorne lowered the maul by three inches, his single dark eye flickering with doubt.
Suddenly, the floor beneath their boots tilted wildly.
A deep, metal groan shivered through the undercarriage of The Glass Pavilion. It shook through the dark wood paneling like the trumpets of doomsday.
Fifty paces ahead on the dark tracks, Locomotive 808 had not cleared the junction switch. Master Cole’s wedges had held. The massive eight-foot drive wheels had struck the jammed points, derailing the cowcatcher and locking the engine across the turnout. In a desperate bid to clear the fouling, the engineer had reversed steam, his backup draw-gear catching the runaway freight van and Lord Malakor’s saloon car with a violent, jarring impact.
SLAM.
The entire carriage lurched sideways. The crystal chandeliers swung in wild, screaming arcs. The dark wood dining table overturned, sending silver tureens, crystal decanters, and roasted game crashing into the velvet walls.
Lord Malakor screamed as his emerald armchair slid across the deck. It smashed into the shattered copper pipes of his ruined breathing mask.
Thorne staggered, his iron boots skidding on the spilled wine, his two-handed maul swinging wide as he fought for balance against the sudden sixty-degree tilt of the carriage.
“The gorge line!” Thorne bellowed, grabbing an iron window support post to keep from falling through the crystal wall. “The points threw us onto the runaway spur!”
Through the plate-glass windows of the saloon car, the blizzard parted for a single, terrifying second.
Ahead of the derailed locomotive lay the Blackwater Runaway Spur. A forgotten, five-mile spur of rotting timber frame stands and rusty iron rails built forty years ago to dump runaway ore wagons over the edge of the limestone cliffs. The slope dropped at a terrifying three percent slope, speeding up eighty tons of runaway steel toward the deep pit.
And at the end of the spur lay the Blackwater Gorge: an eight-hundred-foot deep gap of jagged granite boulders and freezing river rapids.
“The brakes!” Voss screamed, scrambling on his hands and knees toward the rear platform, his ermine collar soaked in wine and soot. “Thorne! The handbrakes!”
“The brakes are frozen solid!” Thorne roared back, trying to haul his massive armored frame upright. “The air line cut when the draw-pin snapped! We’re running wild!”
Ren tightened his grip on Mira, his right arm wrapping around her waist. He lifted her light, half-crystal-clear body as he scrambled toward the outside door. Her smoky quartz arm clinked against the brass doorframe, chiming softly in his ear like a silver bell.
“The roof!” Ren shouted to Vane through the ear-splitting roar of grinding wheel flanges. “Vane! Get to the roof! The timber frame stands will shear the undercarriage off the trucks!”
Vane was already moving, his blackthorn stick jammed under his arm, his fingers clawing up the upkeep ladder toward the watching hatch with desperate speed.
Behind them, Bailiff Thorne recovered his footing amidst the smashed fine china and overturned furniture. The fear in the veteran soldier’s heart transformed into the blind, howling madness of a trapped beast who knows his career, his honor. His life are hurtling toward a cliff edge. He raised his crimson-lit iron maul above his head, the binding runes flaring like fresh blood on snow.
“Nobody leaves this train!” Thorne roared through the shrieking blizzard. “If I’m bound for the gorge, apprentice, you’re riding down with me!”