The knock on the street door came at exactly seven minutes past eight the following morning.
It wasn’t the urgent rapping of a client with a desperate claim, nor was it the heavy, reckless pounding of an alley drunk. It was the deliberate, measured three-stroke strike of an iron-tipped court guard’s mace, spaced exactly two seconds apart, calculated to communicate the total power of the town bench.
Downstairs, the rhythmic clanking of Corben Vane’s screw-press ground to an abrupt halt. The shop fell into a heavy, suspended silence. It was broken only by the dripping of rain from the timber roof edges and the hiss of green birch logs burning in the third-floor hearth.
Tomas was already dressed in his clean wool tunic, his calfskin brace buckled securely over his right forearm, his ash-wood pack frame resting against the wall by the door. He picked up his waterproof leather satchel containing the Circuit Court mandate. Then he walked down the stairs, his boots making no sound on the worn oak treads.
In the ground-floor pressroom, two men stood framed in the open doorway against the gray morning drizzle.
The man in front was tall and spare. It was wrapped in a heavy broadcloth mantle dyed in the dark plum wool of the High Guild Assembly. His collar was trimmed with badger fur, slightly matted by the damp. His soft calfskin gloves were dyed yellow. In his left hand he held an ivory-topped cane. Tucked beneath his right arm was an…
