At midnight on the seventeenth day of autumn, the great bronze carillon of Saint Jude’s Cathedral began to toll. A slow, deep, mournful deep ring that rolled across the dark rooftops of Crown-Reach like distant thunder. The sound traveled along the winding alleys, through the shuttered workshops of Weaver’s Square, and out over the black waters of the river docks.
One toll. A long, echoing silence followed. That let the bronze shaking die away into the cold river mist. Then another. And another.
In the small garret chamber above the printer’s workshop where Tomas Reed lodged, the heavy timber rafters hummed in sympathy with the bronze shakes. Tomas sat on the edge of his straw pallet, fully dressed in his woolen trousers and work smock, his hobnailed boots already laced to his ankles. He counted each stroke in silence, his large, weathered hands resting quietly upon his knees. Beside him, Sile Rook leaned against the windowsill. It watched the lanterns flickering across the city streets below.
Seventy-four strokes.
One slow, solemn chime for each winter of King Alden the Fourth’s life.
When the seventy-fourth stroke died away into the night, the silence that settled over the capital was not one of panic or scared confusion. There were no shouts of royal heralds galloping through the darkness, no wild pounding on armory doors, no clatter of mounted dragoons riding to barricade the palace gates. For two weeks, the city had known the end was near. And for the first time in…
