Tomas Reed stood dead center in the limestone defile. He held his ash staff vertically like an ancient court scepter.
The surrounding substrate of the world answered his call. The air around him shone with a cold, pale slate-gray bright glare—not the violent flare of combat magic, but the steady, blinding clarity of total office discovery.
Charter Inquest.
The ability unlocked with his twenty-first seal swelled through the narrow gorge. It didn’t strike Vance with physical force. It struck the physical parchment inside Vance’s saddlebags and the iron-bound document case carried by his corporal.
Beneath the power of the Inquest, the hidden ink layers within the Ministry’s official bags began to resonate with the physical records resting on Tomas’s sledge.
Vance’s charger shied wildly, snorting in terror as a faint, pale soft glow leaked from the leather seams of the saddlebags at its flank.
“What sorcery is this?” Vance cried, hauling back on his reins with both hands as the stallion danced on the icy gravel.
“It’s not sorcery, Commissioner,” Tomas answered. His voice carried the deep, terrifying deep ring of the law. “It’s the Charter Inquest. Under Section Eleven of the Royal Court trial Promise, whenever an officer of the Crown is formally challenged for fraud in the presence of an active claim, the evidentiary substrate compels the physical disclosure of all hidden instruments.”
