By the sixth hour of the evening, dusk had fallen across Crown-Reach like a black shroud soaked in river fog. The freezing drizzle had turned the steep cobbled lanes leading down from the Citadel into slick chutes of mud and horse grease, where even a shod mule could barely keep its footing.
At the western gate of the city. There, the Grand Canal passed through the outer curtain wall beneath the arch of the Water Gate, a convoy of four heavy freight wagons clattered in desperate haste toward the river raised stone road. Each wagon was pulled by six powerful draft horses, their harness bells silenced with greasy rags, their iron-tired wheels wrapped in strips of wool to muffle the sound. Riding beside the lead carriage was Duke Varis himself. He was wrapped in a dark velvet traveling cloak lined with badger fur, his sword-belt unbuckled and his high-born face gray with tiredness and panic.
Inside the four wagons lay thirty thousand gold sovereigns—the last unencumbered bullion of the Privy Council’s emergency reserve, stripped from the Citadel vaults before the court guards could seal the lower iron doors.
“Drive them!” Varis hissed to his coachman, his voice cracked with strain. “If we clear the canal lock before midnight, the Iron-Hold regiment will meet us at the North Ford! Drive the teams!”
