The third delegation stepped forward to the bar carrying the pungent, astringent odor of vinegar, swamp peat, and sulfur. Marshal Kaelen Drake, an officer of thirty winters in the border service, wore the battered boiled-leather cuirass of the Marchland Constabulary, his left eye covered by a black patch from an old wound. Beside him stood Mara Thorne, a weathered woman of forty-five who had led refugee wagon convoys across the bitter salt flats during the Border Wars.
Between them, they placed an iron-bound medicine room chest upon the evidence table. Inside lay fifty small glass phials filled with thick crimson fluid, together with three large heavy clay jars labeled with the merchant mark of the Southern Isles: Extr. Cocci Cacti — Pure Cochineal Dye.
Tomas Reed adjusted his pack frame where it rested against the timber bar. He recalled the choking humidity of Checkpoint Three in the Weeping Delta, where thousands of common travelers and farming families were locked in permanent wooden pens under the pretext of an epidemic that had burned out a quarter of a century earlier. His left forearm still carried the faint chemical burn from the acid disinfectant baths the camp guards forced every traveler to purchase for two silver coins.
