The dawn that broke over Crown-Reach was cold, pale, and dry, stripped of mist by a sharp wind blowing from the western mountains. The sun had not yet cleared the high limestone spires of the cathedral. But its thin yellow light was already catching the slate gables of Printer’s Alley. It cast long blue shadows across the wet cobblestones.
At the mouth of the alley. There, the lane opened into the broader expanse of Stationers’ Walk, two hundred men formed a solid, menacing line across the thoroughfare. They weren’t common street cutpurses. They were skilled heavy hired blades hired through the Iron Dike Trade ring, wearing boiled-leather jerkins dyed in the dark blue livery of the High Guild Assembly. They carried short iron-headed cudgels, leaded bludgeons, and heavy wooden bucklers studded with steel rivets.
At their center stood Captain Kenneth, a veteran of the Border Wars with a broken nose, cold gray eyes. A steel breastplate strapped over his doublet. In his right hand, he held an iron-tipped baton. It he tapped rhythmically against his thigh.
‘Hear this, printers!’ Kenneth’s voice boomed down the narrow alley, echoing off the timber facades. ‘By order of the High judge and the Grand Warden of the Guilds! This street is declared an area of quarantine under the Sedition Laws! You have ten minutes to open your doors, surrender all lead type-blocks, and deliver all printed papers to our wagons for burning! If you resist, we will enter with iron and clear every shop…
