The morning air over the raised stone road smelled of raw salt-mud, damp wool, and the bitter sulfur smoke of burning animal fat. Outside the check barn, six hundred marsh wagon drivers, peat-diggers, and draymen stood in dense, quiet ranks, their woolen hoods pulled low against the freezing drizzle.
In the middle of the road stood the great iron machinery that had choked the life from the Weeping Delta for twenty-five years: the four heavy toll-spindles of Checkpoint Three. Each spindle was a monstrous turnstile of three-inch forged iron pipes, bolted into massive hemlock sills that spanned the sixty-foot raised stone road like the jaws of a hungry beast. Every spoke was geared to an iron ratchet drum that clicked with a sickening, metal clack every quarter-turn, locking wagons into narrow pens until the sanitary fees were weighed and paid.
Tomas Reed walked down the center of the muddy levee. He was flanked by Nessa Vale and Bram. Tomas carried his iron-gall ledger and a six-foot crowbar. Nessa carried her brass dividers and a tone check rod.
“The charter for these turnstiles was voided three hours ago by the Injunction of Locked deposit Restraint,” Tomas called out. His voice carried over the murmuring crowd to the timber narrow high walkways where the forty disarmed sentries stood watching in silence. “Under Law IV of the Last Claim, an illegal barrier erected upon a sovereign public highway is a blocked path of the realm. We don’t burn it. We audit it, we…
