The heavy iron-heavy gates of Khor-Sula groaned open with the ear-splitting shriek of ungreased hinges.
Ren walked through the huge archway with his head held high, his chin lifted at exactly the arrogant thirty-degree tilt that senior scribes in High-Khorat used to signal supreme office contempt. In his left hand he carried his brass-bound scribal ledger and the forged royal decree, its crimson wax seals catching the flickering light of pitch torches. At his side hung his carved mammoth-bone awl, its silver wire glinting faintly against the rough leather of his lambskin apron.
Behind him marched Tarek, forced forward by the glowing violet brand upon his brow, carrying Ren’s spare parchment satchel with his head bowed like a scared dog.
As they entered the outer courtyard, the brutal reality of Khor-Sula unfolded before them. The yard was paved with jagged blocks of fiery melted rock waste, black and glassy beneath the midday heat. Chained in long rows along the inner curtain wall were over a hundred forced laborers, their backs crisscrossed with scarred whip-marks. Their ankles were locked into iron spreader-bars. They were hauling heavy wooden sledges laden with raw sulfur ore, their breathing ragged and shallow in the stifling, dust-laden air. Suspended from iron gibbets above the stables hung three iron gibbet-cages containing the sun-bleached skeletons of runaway slaves, left to rattle in the dry wind as a warning to the living.
