Chapter 2: Things That Shine

The county seat was called Marrowell, and it was what Onner's Bridge would be if you gave it money and took away its excuse. Six streets. A wall the town had outgrown and kept anyway, like a belt from a thinner decade. The Assessor's Office occupied the ground floor of the municipal hall, and the records annex stood behind it, stone below and old timber above, with narrow windows and a roof that Genna's professional eye priced at thirty years past its honest life. She presented her commission at the counter at half eight on her third morning of travel, and the clerk gave it a clerk's reading, which is to say for flaws. "Junior seal," the clerk said. He was young, with the beginnings of an important mustache. "Junior seals need a countersign from the issuing office for parish work. Or a guild endorsement." "The commission is the countersign." "The commission is the engagement." He said it with the satisfaction of a man laying down a winning tile. "The countersign is the countersign." Genna breathed in and put her hand flat on the counter to keep it from doing anything else. The clerk's eyes went to the ring, because the ring was doing what brass does in morning light. "That's a guild mark," he said, in a new voice. "It's my father's." The mustache moved. Machinery moved behind it. "Busterson," he said, reading her name off the commission properly this time. He looked up at her with the whole weather of his face changed, and she watched the recognition arrive the way you'd watch rain come across a valley, knowing exactly when it would reach you and getting wet anyway. "The Corvale pass," he said. "The ale road. My uncle carts for the Redwall brewery. He's stood the pass…