The Inquisitor stepped into the tent, the wet silk of his white robes dragging silently across the damp earth. He was alone, having left his personal guard at the perimeter of the pavilion, confident that a room containing a locked-down vanguard and a bound prisoner required no extra steel. He stopped dead in his tracks. The silver helmet of the weeping saint sat on the wooden crate, its hollow eyes staring blankly at the ceiling. Standing beside it was Georgia. Her violet eyes, cold and sharp as cracked glass, locked onto his. "You," the Inquisitor whispered. His eyes widened, darting from her pale, soot-stained face to the ivory silk peeking from her leg guards. The puzzle pieces clicked together in his mind with a sickening finality. "The Songbird..." "Inquisitor," Georgia said softly. Before the holy man could draw breath to scream for the guards outside, Georgia lunged. The weight of the unpowered armor was a crushing anchor, but the raw, desperate adrenaline surging through her veins lent her a terrible, unnatural speed. She crossed the distance between them in a single heartbeat. Her gloved hand slammed into his throat, crushing his windpipe and choking his half-formed shout into a wet, breathless gasp. With a dull, heavy sweep of her armored leg, she kicked his feet out from under him, slamming him onto the dirt floor of the tent. The Inquisitor thrashed, his pale hands clawing frantically at the cold, gold-trimmed steel of her gauntlet. Georgia knelt on his chest, her knee driving into his ribs with the full, sixty-pound weight of the Vanguard armor. She drew the rusted hunting knife from her belt, holding the jagged blade bare millimeters from his left eye. "Make a sound," she whispered, her voice dropping into a register so cold it made the old man freeze beneath her, "and I will carve the light from your skull before your guards can clear the flap." The Inquisitor’s eyes filled with a primal, suffocating terror. He slowly nodded, his hands shaking as he let them fall limp against the dirt. Corin scrambled up from the bench, his hands pulling hard against the slipknot of his hemp rope. With a sharp tug, the bindings unraveled, falling to the floor. He rushed over, grabbing a thick roll of canvas binding tape from the interrogation table. "Tie his hands," Georgia commanded, her gaze never wavering from the Inquisitor’s face. "Tight." Corin worked with frantic efficiency, binding the Inquisitor’s wrists behind his back and wrapping a thick strip of leather around his mouth to gag him. Georgia slowly stood up, looking down at the shivering, helpless figure of the man who had planned to turn her into a mute, stone-bound anchor for the Western skies. She picked up her silver saint helmet, sliding it back over her head. The lock engaged with a heavy, mechanical clack, sealing her once more behind the weeping face of her enemy. "Get his robes," Georgia’s flat, metallic voice ordered through the visor. Corin quickly stripped the heavy, silver-embroidered silk cloak from the Inquisitor's shoulders. He threw it over his own tattered coat, pulling the deep hood low over his face to obscure his features. Georgia grabbed the Inquisitor by his collar, dragging him upright. She pressed the sharp point of her hidden knife through his robes, right against his spine. "You are going to escort us to the boarding gantry of The Iron Saint," Georgia said, her voice a deadly whisper behind the silver mask. "If you stumble, if you try to signal the guards, the blade goes straight through your heart. Do you understand?" The Inquisitor nod-shivered, his face slick with cold sweat beneath his gag. Georgia looked at Corin. Under the shadow of the silver-embroidered hood, his eyes were bright with a terrified, wild resolve. "Let's go," she said. They stepped out of the tent into the pouring rain, dragging the high-ranking hostage into the gold-lit chaos of the launching war-vessel.

Chapter 27: The Broken Seal