The red wax seal of the Ministry of War gleamed under the yellow lantern light, cold, untouched, and unbending.
Tomas Reed stepped up to the boiler-plate iron doors, his pack set aside, his tools laid out on a clean cotton check cloth spread over the stone floor. He took his ivory bone-scraper, his brass magnifying glass, and his spirit lamp, preparing for the formal unsealing of a royal military vault.
“Nessa,” Tomas said, not turning his head. “Witness the shape.”
Nessa brought her four-foot wooden ruler to the iron door. With cold and exact, dispassionate speed, she measured the position of the wax wafer. Dead center across the meeting-stile, three feet six inches above the flat stone slabs, the red silk ribbon anchored to two forged iron eyelets bolted through the plate.
“The ribbon is dry-rotted flax,” Nessa announced, checking the fibers with her tweezers. “The red dye is cochineal, faded slightly along the upper margin where the air circulated from the hall. The wax is pure beeswax compounded with Venice turpentine and vermilion pigment. No evidence of heat reheating or counterfeit re-stamping.”
Tomas knelt before the lock. He focused his awareness upon the red seal. He drew upon the evidentiary deep ring of his Last Claim class.
