By the eighth bell of the evening, the undercroft was locked down under armed siege.
Captain Thorne’s city court guards had refused to leave the public square. They maintained an armed vigil around the outer edge of the courthouse, while sixty Iron Templars remained barricaded inside the Granite Hall. Between the two factions, the courthouse had become an armed island, fully cut from town administration.
Inside Cell Four, Ren Vale was not sleeping.
The sense friction from sustaining Brother Ren’s body absorption had left Ren with a burning fever, his forehead slick with sweat, his tiny blood vessels throbbing with sympathetic agony. But in the center of the cell floor, lit up by the pale gold-silver metal glow of the Speculum resting on the straw, a very different kind of battle was being waged.
Vane Vale was crouched on his knees, his tailored velvet coat discarded over his shoulder, his silk cuffs rolled up to reveal manicured wrists.
Spread across the dirty flat stone slabs were twelve rolled sheets of parchment. The official Tax and Mortuary Debt Rolls of the High Nobility, which Ren-the-Cinder had scavenged from the Chief Clerk’s private safe during the chaos of the afternoon standoff.
The method by which the debt rolls had arrived in Cell Four was a masterclass in low-city thievery.
