The departure from High Karst didn’t look like the retreat of a weary audit team. It was a sovereign procession of working-class accountability. By the second hour of morning, thirty heavy freight wagons stood lined up on the Great Northern Highway, their iron-shod wheels biting into the packed snow. Each wagon was loaded with four large iron-banded chests holding the restored registers of Sector One. He was flanked by forty armed independent watchmen carrying tall body-shield shields and boar-spears.
Behind the wagons marched sixty young apprentice scribes and porters, their canvas coats patched and greased, their lead-lined courier satchels strapped across their chests. In the center of the column, chained between two baggage carts and guarded by four grim-faced Karst miners, walked Ex-Guildmaster Aldous Karr, his head bowed. His muddy boots shuffled in the snow. Beside him walked Clerk Orson, carrying his sworn settling in a lead tube slung over his shoulder.
Tomas Reed walked at the head of the caravan, his ash-wood pack-frame strapped firmly to his shoulders. In his right hand he carried an ash staff notched with the forty-four-character measure. His left wrist was secure in its buckled calfskin brace. Beside him walked Nessa Vale, her dual-cone hearing horn slung at her throat, her brass level-transit packed safely in its sheepskin crate on the lead wagon.
