The smell of bitter gum arabic, damp sheep thick parchment, and acidic iron gall rushed back into the Sanctum. It swept away the stench of scorched engine oil and burnt burlap. Master Ren, the Scroll-keeper, knelt upon the silver glass with the unrushed grace of a monk copying gospel in a winter writing hall. His dark, plain robes were cinched with a plain hemp rope. His heavy grey stone slate rested across his thighs, and in his right hand, he held a pestle ground from a single piece of mammoth tusk, its blunt end stained with decades of permanent lampblack. Beside him stood Scribe Ren, the King’s Forger. Tall, wiry, with ink-stained fingertips and a smirk full of yellowed teeth, balancing a six-inch silver-nipped pool quill between his index and middle fingers like a gambler spinning a coin.
‘Look at him, Master,’ Scribe Ren drawled, his voice oily, fast-paced, and thick with the slang of the under-city scribal dens where men forged town bread-tokens for two silver coins a sheet. ‘Four hundred years old, draped in funeral ash. He carried a gold-silver metal mirror shard, and he thinks he can audit our ledger. He thinks because he has a sharp edge, the whole world is a sheet of scrap thick parchment waiting for the razor.’ Scribe Ren dipped his silver nib into a small, brass-stoppered phial of burning acid ink that hung from his leather belt. ‘He forgot rule number one of the High court: the sword cuts the clerk…
