The Ink Court’s Inquiry
The first sign was the parchment.
Not read aloud. Not nailed to a pole. Simply handed to the quartermaster on the southern loop and walked inward, folded twice, with the wax still warm.
The bearer wore no armor, only layers of wool beneath a black cloak stitched in white triangles — the crest of the Ink Court's Low Arm.
He did not announce himself.
He didn't need to.
Clerks never carried swords.
They didn't have to.
Raive whistled low when he heard.
"We've been audited," he muttered, half-joking.
Darin didn't laugh.
"Not 'we,'" he said. "Me."
By midday, word had already spread.
The "Black Ditch" was receiving a visitor. Not a noble. Worse — a paper knight. The kind who filed battlefield contradictions and flagged names on payment scrolls.
Men began to clean things.
Not because Darin asked.
But because filth was defensible.
Disorder was not.
Jorah straightened his blanket stack.
Cren rubbed oil into the pike heads.
Two younger men practiced their answers.
"Do we call you 'commander'?" one asked Darin.
"No."
"Captain?"
"No."
"Sir?"
Darin paused.
"Call me whatever sounds like someone they didn't promote."
The clerk arrived after sundown.
His boots were polished. His hands ink-stained. His chin was shaved, but his lips were cracked from cold, like someone who didn't belong here but came anyway.
He gave no name.
But he gave the scroll.
Raive read it aloud by torch.
"By Order of the Fifth Record Division, pursuant to mobilization protocol and internal cohesion mandates, this site and its personnel are subject to review. No titles, honors, or arm-bands may be referenced during testimony."– Sealed by: Castan Thorne, Notary of Field Presence, Sub-Ink Court
Darin folded the scroll and handed it back.
"Who do you report to?"
The clerk blinked.
"Words," he said plainly.
Darin didn't respond.
The inspection took four hours.
The clerk walked, asked, noted. Asked again. Never raised his voice. Never smiled.
He recorded weapon counts. Ration estimates. Asked after latrine schedules and prayer customs.
When he reached the banner pole—bare, wind-whipped, crooked—he stopped.
"Why is there a standard with no seal?"
Raive answered before Darin could.
"It's a pike shaft."
"And the cloth?"
"Drying canvas."
The clerk nodded. Wrote that down.
He knew it was a lie.
But it was a safe lie.
Later, as the clerk scribbled notes beside the fire, he asked a question without looking up.
"Your men call this place 'The Black Ditch.' Who authorized the naming?"
Darin stirred the stewpot. "No one."
The clerk paused. "Then who permitted the armbands?"
"No one."
"Who issued duty chains?"
"No one."
"Then who leads this unit?"
Darin didn't answer.
He ladled stew.
Handed the bowl to the clerk.
"Eat," he said. "Then write whatever keeps us fed."
By morning, the clerk was gone.
No stamp. No writ. No verdict.
But two days later, a new supply cart arrived.
It carried twenty pikes.
And fifty blank armbands.
Black.
Darin stared at the crate label.
There was no sender.
Just a mark: a stamped triangle. White. Faded.
Falshade's color.
That night, Darin met Raive outside the ditch wall.
"He filed no fault."
Raive shrugged. "He filed something."
Darin nodded.
Then tied a new band at his wrist.
"They're not watching for errors," he said. "They're watching for reaction."
And he had given them none.