The High-Arch Town Record Office was housed in the vaulted limestone crypts beneath the Old Guildhall. There, the dampness of the mountain met sixty years of piled up public paper.
Tomas Reed entered the low, arched portal with his ash pack frame resting across one shoulder. His boots struck the cold flat stone slabs with measured, echoing power. Beside him walked Hester Quill, her black advocate’s robe rustling with the stiff rustle of calfskin-bound folios. It carried her approved copy of the Emergency Inquest Mandate issued under the Great Seal of the High Court. Behind them came Sile Rook. His oak tall body-shield was held firmly at his side, his sharp, scarred face warning off two junior court guards who stayed near the entrance wicket.
The air in the archive smelled of damp sheepskin, crumbly animal glue, powdered blotting chalk, and the sour, acidic tang of burning acid ink that had slowly decomposed in the dark. Rows of towering pine shelving units, twelve feet high and fifty yards long, stretched away into the gloom, stacked with thousands of calfskin portmanteaus, ribbon-bound rolls, and cedar boxes containing the office history of the northern province.
At the main reference desk sat Chief Archivist Malvern. A small, bald man with ink-stained glasses perched on his nose and trembling hands that fluttered nervously among his ledger piles like trapped moths.
