By the fifth hour of the morning, the chimneys of the forty-eight master bakeries of Crown-Reach stood cold, dark, and smokeless against the low gray autumn sky. For two hundred years, the sweet, yeasty fragrance of rising sourdough, warm rye loaves, and coarse barley trenchers had signaled the waking heartbeat of the capital. Heavy cart horses would normally be stamping their hooves by the hundred in the delivery bays along Miller’s Wharf. Apprentices would be wheeling barrows stacked three deep with wicker bread baskets. And the high ovens along the river wall would be roaring with split-oak cordwood until the limestone streets smelled like hearth and harvest.
Today, there was no smoke. The morning river wind brought only the sour tang of tidal mud, the chill of wet slate roofs, and the sharp damp of autumn fog clinging to the cobblestones of Weaver’s Square.
Tomas Reed stepped out from the covered row of stone pillars of the Grain Exchange, his cart driver boots finding firm purchase on the stones. The heavy ash-wood pack frame was strapped to his shoulders, its oiled leather harness biting into the wool of his gray tunic with familiar, measured pressure. In the central satchel against his lower-back spine rested the Sovereign Ledger of King Alden the First—fifteen pounds of iron-banded thick parchment wrapped in three layers of greased cowhide. Beside him walked Sile Rook, his scarred face turned toward the northern approach, his heavy oak tall body-shield slung across his back and an iron-shod hooked…
