The heat bit through both palms in one breath, deep and total. She took all of it in without a sound, one more payment into a very old account.
*KRRUNK.*
The hinges gave before the door did. This one she threw, and it went tolling across the bailey like a dropped bell, and the commission got its first look inside.
The count's men had built a pyre in the center aisle out of the archive's own racks and were feeding it by the armful.
A dozen of them, stripped to shirtsleeves, black to the elbow, faces cooked red by a night of it.
At the far end, two more hauled crates out of the deep racks, where a night of burning had not reached yet.
For the space of one breath, everything stopped: the burners with their arms full, the commission in the doorway, the fire eating in the middle.
Then Corvane wrenched one arm free and screamed past his own guards with his voice tearing in half.
"BURN IT! BURN THE REST! If you love your children, BURN IT ALL!"
And his men chose the fire.
