The North Gate of Bellwether was choked with a frantic, snarling mass of carriages, hand-barrows, and pack-mules. Rumors of Holt’s arrest and the impending low-tide breach had spread through the High Ward like wildfire. It sent hundreds of wealthy merchants and guild officials fleeing toward the upland estates with their silver plate and velvet trunks.
Trapped in the narrow cobblestone bottleneck before the drop-gate sat Lani Moss’s third caravan wagon. Its canvas cover lashed was tight over the leftover archival chests of Lantern Bend. Standing in front of the lead horses was Chief Gate Bailiff Vane—the brother of the trade ring advocate—backed by eight armed guards in polished breastplates.
“No common freight carts through the North Gate during an escape emergency!” Vane bellowed, drawing his iron truncheon. “Turn this dung-wagon around and take the marsh road! If you want the high road, the transit fee is fifty gold crowns per axle!”
Lani Moss sat on the wagon box, her knuckles white around her whip handle, her horses dancing nervously on the wet cobbles. “The marsh road is under three feet of water, you thief! These are the records of our dead!”
Tomas Reed strode through the crowd, Sile Rook flanking him with his heavy hooked pruning blade resting across his iron-bound shoulder. Tomas’s left arm was pinned tight in its sling. But his right hand held Hester Quill’s gold-sealed writ of universal transit.
Tomas stepped directly into Vane’s path, shoving the parchment into the court guard’s chest. “You’re obstructing an active court custody transfer under high court warrant. Section Nine of the Sovereign Transit Act: Any officer demanding a secret toll or closing a public gate against an active carrier of record during an emergency is guilty of felony extortion.”
Vane sneered, knocking the parchment aside. “A paper from a dead court! The guild commands this gate, porter, and you have no soldiers here!”
“He has soldiers,” a cold, iron voice rang out. Commander Thess Arden stepped from the guardhouse arch. His brass-headed cane struck the flat stone slabs with the power of a royal decree. Behind Arden marched thirty veteran quarrymen armed with heavy sledgehammers and crowbars, their faces set in hard, granite lines.
Arden looked Bailiff Vane dead in the eye. “I built this gate forty years ago, Vane. I know which winch drops the drop-gate. I know which lever breaks a court guard’s collarbone. Stand aside, or my men will throw your carriages into the ditch.”
The gate court guards looked at Arden’s scarred face, at Sile Rook’s tall oak body-shield, and at the thirty stonecutters gripping their sledges. Without a word, Vane stepped back, his truncheon trembling in his grip.
“Raise the iron!” Arden roared.
None of Bailiff Vane’s eight breastplated guards moved to turn the crank winch handles inside the gatehouse arch. Instead, Vane’s senior corporal reached up. Then he pulled the heavy iron locking-pin from the backup drop-ratchet. That let the counter-pawl fall dead into the cog-wheel so the drop-gate hung jammed three feet above the cobbles. Directly behind the iron grate, blocking the center of the highway arch, sat a gold-trimmed four-horse landau belonging to Alderman Cress of the High Bluff Waterworks Trade ring, its roof piled high with leather plate-trunks and dark wood wine-cases.
“The crank winch chain is fouled on the upper drum, Commander!” Court guard Vane shouted, a malicious smirk twisting his mouth as he backed behind the iron grille beside the landau’s rear wheels. “And Alderman Cress’s carriage has a broken trace-buckle in the arch! No wagon gets through the North Gate until the trade ring smith comes up from the High Ward at noon!”
From the velvet-curtained window of the landau, Alderman Cress leaned his powdered head out into the mist. He waved a silver-mounted riding crop at Lani Moss’s heavy cart-team. “Unhitch your cart-horses and drag my coach clear of the arch first, carter! I’ll give you two silver coins for the tow. You can wait your turn behind the gentlefolk!”
Lani Moss didn’t reach for the town elder’s silver coins. She stood up on the foot-board of her third caravan wagon, her weathered duck-canvas coat snapping in the northern gale. Then she looked down at Tomas Reed. “If we sit in this bottleneck until noon, porter, the morning flood-tide will back up the ditch along the north raised stone road and cut us off from the Lantern Bend winter camp. Tell me the law lets us clear the King’s road.”
Tomas stepped to the iron drop-gate grille. His left forearm held was tight in its black wool sling against his ribs. Meanwhile, his right hand drew his brass-tipped land-mapper’s folding rule and tapped the jammed cog-wheel inside the crank winch box. “Under Section Fourteen of the Sovereign Transit Act, where a private pleasure-coach obstructs a chartered carrier under court warrant in a fortified gateway, the watch commander and the carrier’s crew are authorized to abate the nuisance by moving the obstructing vessel to the ditch without debt for paint or varnish.”
Commander Thess Arden struck his brass-headed cane once against the granite curbstone. “You heard the Carrier’s reading of the statute, lads! Wedge-men to the winch-drum! Wagon drivers to the landau’s hubs!”
Four of Mara Flint’s burly quarrymen stepped into the guardhouse arch, brushing Vane’s startled guards aside with their leather aprons. One of the stonecutters wedged the chisel-point of a five-foot iron crowbar beneath the jammed locking-pawl on the crank winch cog and threw his shoulder downward. With a sharp metal clang, the rusted pin snapped out of the tooth. Two other quarrymen seized the oak spokes of the main crank winch wheel. Meanwhile, Sile Rook braced his scarred back against the backup drum to take the slack of the greasy iron chain.
At the same time, Lani Moss jumped down from her wagon box with a thirty-foot braided hemp tow-cable looped over her shoulder. Before Alderman Cress could pull his head back inside the gold-trimmed coach window, Lani and two of her flatboat pole-men passed the hemp cable straight under the rear axle-tree of the landau, hooked the iron clevis to the whiffletree of two massive Old Flint quarry-mules. Then they slapped the mules’ flanks.
With a screech of locked carriage-brakes on wet limestone, the two quarry-mules hauled the gold-trimmed landau backward out of the gateway arch and slewed it neatly into the muddy recessed lay-by beside the horse-trough, tilted at a fifteen-degree angle with its left wheels sunk hub-deep in the gutter. Inside the tilting cab, dark wood wine-cases tumbled across the velvet cushions. Meanwhile, Alderman Cress hammered furiously on the roof-trap.
Tomas didn’t pause to watch the town elder climb out into the mud. He walked to the stone pier beneath the crank winch housing. He opened his pipe hub receipt book against the dressed granite and wrote a three-line abatement notice with his right hand: North Gate Arch, Sixth Hour. Blocked path by private carriage of Alderman Cress abated under Section 14 to clear court transit lane for Lantern Bend Wagon No. 3. Witnessed by Commander T. Arden.
He wedged the duplicate carbon slip under the brass lamp-bracket of the tilted landau. Then he stepped back to the dry curb beside Lani Moss’s lead horse and raised his right hand to the quarrymen on the crank winch spokes.
The heavy iron drop-gate groaned upward in its stone slots. Lani Moss cracked her whip, the heavy cart-horses surged forward with a shower of sparks from their iron shoes. The third wagon of Lantern Bend rolled through the great stone archway into the open safety of the high northern highway.