The gray light of a winter dawn broke over the chimney stacks of the Lower Wards. It showed streets coated in a filthy slush of coal soot, melting sleet, and river muck. Through the dense river fog that drifted from the Silt River, the brass horns of the Ducal Household Guard sounded from the four cardinal crossroads of the capital. Three sharp, brassy blasts that shook against the wet timber walls of the apartments like a butcher’s saw on beef bone.
Tomas Reed emerged from the south under-road drain access grate in the yard of the Tanners’ Guild. His boots dragged three inches of black sewer settled mud onto the wet paving stones. His wool coat was soaked to the lining. It steamed in the freezing morning air. His left arm throbbed with a rhythmic, dull fire where the calfskin wrist brace pressed into his scarred flexor tendon. Across his chest, the heavy canvas courier satchel containing the Master Sovereign Ledger and twenty silver metal bars pulled against his collarbones with the unbending power of thirty pounds of northern bullion.
Behind him, Sile Rook levered the heavy iron grating back into its stone frame with the heel of his boot. Meanwhile, Nessa Vale wrung out the hem of her travel cloak, her eyes scanning the rooftops for movement. In the cart hauling yards of Low Bellwether, a morning that began with soldiers blowing horns was a morning when common men lost their wages, their carts, or their lives. Tomas stood…
