The town jailhouse of High Karst was an ancient dark rock blockhouse built into the lower terrace of the mountain gate, directly beneath the thunderous spray of the town mill-race. Its cellars were always cold. It smelled of wet slate, rotten-egg drainage water, and the vinegar used to disinfect the iron leg-fetters. Inside the dampest cell, Guildmaster Aldous Karr sat on an oak bench, his knees drawn up to his chin, his gray hair plastered to his forehead in sweaty clumps.
Captain Sile Rook stood in the doorway, his iron-plated boots planted shoulder-width apart. His hooked pruning blade leaned against the stone doorframe. Beside him, Tomas Reed stood with his lead-lined courier satchel resting on an overturned meal tub. He watched the prisoner through the iron bars.
“You have made a total mistake, Reed,” Karr said. His voice shook with a mixture of terror and high-born venom. “You think you have won because you handed a few sacks of silver to illiterate miners. You have no conception of the commercial machinery you have disturbed. The sixty thousand crowns you seized from my stables weren’t mine. They belonged to the Karst Trade group, pledged under servant contract to the Lord High judge’s private commercial trust!”
