Page 154 of Zenith Tower

Hale had reached Kieran. He stood between the chair and the nearest steward with one arm around Kieran’s waist. Kieran’s shirt hung open from his injured shoulder. The restored Mark still flickered around the branching scars.

Delphine remained behind the witness rail. The clerk was crouched beside her, gathering pages that had spilled from the hearing ledger.

The administrator kept her palm against the broken wax on the control plate.

“Emergency restraint suspended,” she said. Her voice carried through the chamber. “All local doors released pending investigation of an unsafe examination.”

Locks opened inside both walls.

Indicator lines woke across the control plate beneath her hand. Most burned black under Walkin’s authority. Only the western route remained blue, its locks answering the administrator’s emergency command one after another.

Walkin rose from the administrator’s chair. “You were relieved of post.”

“The control system has not processed your order.”

“Then remove her from it.”

Two stewards started toward the panel.

Marrow stepped into their path.

I braced for him to stop them. Instead, he caught the nearer steward by the shoulder and redirected him around the overturned chair, clearing a faster route to the administrator.

He was still following Walkin’s order.

Astra’s hand closed around mine. The lines at her wrist shone in the low light, silver beneath my thumb, rain-dark and green-gold beside it.

“West door,” the administrator called.

The clerk looked up.

She had collected the hearing pages against her chest. Walkin saw them at the same time I did.

“The record remains here,” they said.

The clerk went still. She had spent the hearing asking permission before every line she entered. No one gave her permission now.

She looked toward the administrator, then at Delphine’s raised silver hand.

Delphine reached through the rail.

The clerk put the pages into her grasp.

The clerk gathered Kieran’s folio from the hearing table, folded its loose pages inside the cover, and pushed it through the rail as well.

Delphine fastened the hearing pages and the folio inside her coat.

The bound ledger remained open on the table, every ruling and objection entered in the same hand as the pages Delphine now carried.

Walkin’s hand closed over the back of the administrator’s chair.

“Take them.”

The steward nearest Delphine caught the rail and vaulted it instead of going around. I released Astra and met him as his boots struck the floor. His momentum carried into my shoulder. I turned with it, caught his coat beneath the arm, and drove him across the edge of the table.

The impact drove the breath from him. I tore the baton from his hand and sent it beneath the witness bench.

“Can you run?” I asked.