UNDER THE CROSIER’S SHADOW - The Scaffold Plunge and the Missing Officer

Wind scraped through the mortise holes of the south-tower scaffolding, whistling like a dying dog through three storeys of green larch timber.

Inside the lower hall of the Magistrate Court, the air tasted of wet lime-dust and cold grease. Rain bled through the high, unglazed lancets, dripping off the carved corbels to pool in the floor crack where the flagstones had settled into the mud. A hundred men crowded the benches—quarry hands with grey paste dried in the creases of their knuckles, town guards smelling of stale small-beer, and friars from the outer yard wrapping soaked wool robes around their knees.

At the high dais, Lord Morrigan sat in a chair of iron-braced oak. He didn’t lean back. His pale hands rested flat on the salt-stained grain of the table, his index finger tapping a rhythm that meant nothing to anyone except the guard captain standing behind him. Below him, at the low desk reserved for the priory scriptorium, Master Eustace sat bent like an old hazel switch. The blind archivist’s eyes were white as boiled turnip flesh, milky and unblinking, his long fingers trailing across a roll of dry vellum with the slow, terrifying patience of a spider counting flies.

“He killed them,” Bailiff Hector barked.

Hector stood in the central aisle, his heavy leather coat splattered with river-silt up to the hip-knots. His broad face was flushed dark red, veins rope-thick along his bull neck. He pointed a scarred forefinger directly at Kellan’s chest.

“Four men,” Hector spat, turning toward the crowded benches to gather their murmur. “Four good lads from the logging cut! Found them at the base of the staging frame with their skulls crushed like rotten melons. And who was up top? Who was holding the winch bar when the main stay broke? This clerk. This ink-fingered beggar.”

Kellan did not move. He stood behind the iron-bound rail of the dock, his hands folded neatly inside his long wool sleeves. His skin was pale under the dim torchlight, the illusion of human blood humming thin and fragile beneath his cheeks. He could feel the marrow-cold drag of his true form itching beneath the skin-glamour, but he kept his eyes lowered, staring at a smear of dried pig-gall on the floorboards.

“The winch stay was rotten, Bailiff,” Kellan said. His voice was soft, flat, carrying just far enough to cut under the sound of the rain. “I noted the grain rot in the quartermaster’s register three days before the fall.”

“You logged shit!” Hector slammed his gauntleted hand down on the dock rail. The oak groaned. “You logged what you wanted us to see! You tightened the tension line yourself. I saw you at the capstan before dawn!”

“Let us look at what was logged,” a dry voice croaked from the clerk’s table.

Master Eustace didn’t lift his head. His ink-stained thumb slid over the edge of a thick ledger bound in raw horsehide—a book Kellan had slipped into the scriptorium stacks two hours before the bell for prime.

“Master Eustace,” Hector rasped, turning his aggression toward the blind priest. “This is a matter of blood and iron, not scriptorium scribbling. The man is an outsider. He came from the lower valley with no paper from the bishop, no—”

“Silence, Hector,” Lord Morrigan said.

The word wasn’t loud, but the room went so still that the drip of water from the lancet sounded like small hammers on lead. Morrigan didn’t look at Hector. His grey, hawkish eyes remained fixed on Kellan, tracking the slight, rhythmic rise and fall of the clerk’s chest.

“Read the record, Eustace,” Morrigan commanded.

The old archivist cleared his throat, a wet, rattling sound that ended in a cough. He ran his calloused fingertips along the cracked parchment page. “Entry for the fourth day of the frost-month. Signed by the deceased foreman, Bailiff Hector’s own nephew, God rest his foul soul. ‘Received forty arm-lengths of salted rope from the Priory store. Returned twelve arm-lengths of dry larch staging.’ But here…” Eustace paused, his sightless eyes rolling toward the roof beams. “…the tally on the Priory gate register shows sixty arm-lengths delivered. Where did the twenty go?”

Hector shifted his boots. Wet mud squelched out from beneath his soles. “A miscount by the gate brother. The old fool can hardly see his own teeth.”

“The old fool is dead, killed by the bloody flux last Martinmas,” Eustace snapped back, his voice dropping into a dry, razor-edged hiss. “And the signature on the secondary requisition isn’t his. It bears the mark of the quarry fence at Black-Ditch. Three hundred iron nails, six barrels of dark waterproof pitch, and two bundles of steel chisels. All diverted from the south tower scaffolding.”

Eustace turned the page with a sharp crack of stiff skin.

“It seems,” the blind master continued, his lips pulling back over yellowed teeth, “the four men who died under the staging were not working for the Priory when the stay broke. They were stripping the south wall’s iron ties to sell to the blacksmith in the lower reach. They had three sacks of cut lead concealed beneath the timber staging when it collapsed. Kellan didn’t loosen the stay. The staging gave way because four greedy swine overloaded the lever arm to hoist stolen lead down the dry moat.”

A murmur broke through the back rows—quarrymen muttering to one another, eyes sliding toward Hector.

Hector’s jaw worked silently. His hand dropped to the pommel of his shortsword, his knuckles white. “This is forged,” he rasped. “The boy brought those ledgers out of the cellar himself! He’s clever with a quill. He can imitate any mark!”

“The wax seal on the bottom fold,” Eustace said, lifting his chin, “is pressed with the ring of the Priory Vicar. The seal was broken three weeks ago, long before this boy ever touched an ink-pot in my room. Unless you mean to tell Lord Morrigan that a boy from the lower road possesses the Vicar’s personal signet?”

Morrigan leaned forward, his elbows resting on his knees. The iron ring on his finger clicked against the wood. “Hector.”

“My Lord,” the bailiff rasped, dropping his head, though his eyes remained hooked on Kellan like rusted gaffs.

“You brought a murder charge into my hall based on the word of your dead nephew’s drinking companions,” Morrigan said cold. “You waste my time. You waste the Priory’s vellum. And you leave the south staging unmanned when the wind is coming around from the north.”

“The timber is unstable—”

“Then fix it,” Morrigan cut him off. He stood up, his heavy fur-trimmed cloak sweeping behind him. “If another stick of larch falls into the moat before the masons set the stone, I’ll have you tied to the capstan in their place. Court is cleared.”

The crowd stirred, boots scraping against the flags as the room began to empty into the cold drizzle outside. Hector remained standing in the aisle for a long moment. He didn’t move until Morrigan had disappeared through the high archway leading to the inner keep.

Then, turning slowly, Hector walked right up to the wooden dock. He was so close Kellan could smell the rancid mutton fat on the man’s linen shirt and the sour tang of old wine on his breath.

“You think you’re deep, don’t you?” Hector whispered. His voice was low, gravelly, vibrating with a desperate, mean hatred. “You think that blind old goat can shield you with his paper?”

Kellan looked at him, his face smooth, perfectly empty. “The lead was marked, Bailiff. You should have told your nephew to scrub the Priory stamp off the ingots before he stacked them.”

Hector leaned over the rail, his dark eyes squinting into Kellan’s. “I know what you are,” he spat softly. “No clerk steps like you do. You don’t make a sound when you cross the floorboards. I watched you walk through the mud yesterday—your heels don’t sink an inch. You’re a leech. And I’m going to find the nest you crawled out of.”

Hector drove his heel into the floorboards, turned with a scowl, and strode out of the hall into the grey rain.

Kellan stood in the dock until the footsteps faded. Slowly, he unclasped his hands, reached into his sleeve, and pulled out a clean square of scrap sheepskin. With a small bone-handled knife from his pocket, he shaved the corner of his thumb nail, carefully scraping away a flake of dried chalk that had caught in the joint.

Master Eustace didn’t leave his desk. He was busily rolling the forged ledgers back into their leather sheaths.

“He’s a stupid man,” Eustace muttered to the empty hall, his milky eyes staring at the damp stone wall across from him. “Stupid men are dangerous, boy. They don’t listen to reason, and they don’t die when they’re supposed to. Bring me two jars of gall-ink from the lower storeroom before vespers. And don’t spill it on the stairs.”

“Yes, Master,” Kellan said softly.

Midnight came with a hard, driving sleet that turned the oak scaffolding into ice-coated iron.

The south wall tower hung out over the dry moat like a broken tooth. Half-finished stone courses stuck up into the black sky, topped by temporary staging built from thick green larch poles and lashed together with hemp rope. Below, sixty feet down, the dry moat was a jagged mass of shale, iron slag, and old foundation stones covered in frozen nettles.

Bailiff Hector pushed open the small iron-studded door at the base of the wall tower. He had a brass lantern in his left hand and his shortsword drawn in his right.

“Show yourself, you bastard,” Hector muttered, his breath coming in hot white plumes.

He had found the note pinned to his table after the third bell. It was written in precise, round scriptorium hand, sealed with a drop of green candle-wax pressed with his dead nephew’s signet ring—the very ring that had gone missing from the corpse at the bottom of the staging.

The iron ties from the gatehouse are under the south tower floor. Come alone, or the Lord’s captain gets the third ledger.

Hector climbed the winding stone stairs, his heavy iron-shod boots clattering on the spiral steps. The air grew colder, sharper, smelling of high wind and wet mortar. When he reached the upper platform—where the stone gave way to the open wooden scaffold overhang—the wind hit him like a flat-bladed shovel.

The staging creaked. The heavy larch beams groaned under the gusts, the iron brackets squeaking as they strained against the masonry.

“Kellan!” Hector shouted, raising the lantern high. The yellow flame flickered behind cracked horn panes. “I know you’re here! Step out into the light, or I’ll have the guards tear the scriptorium apart plank by plank!”

A figure stepped out from behind the heavy winch drum at the far end of the platform.

He wasn’t wearing his clerk’s wool cloak. Kellan stood in a thin tunic of unbleached linen, his dark hair plastered to his forehead by the freezing rain. He didn’t shiver. He didn’t pull his arms tight against the biting cold. He stood perfectly still on the slick, icy planks, six inches from the edge where the platform dropped away into the black void of the moat.

“You brought the sword,” Kellan observed. His voice was entirely flat, stripped of the timid, soft-spoken pitch he used in the court.

Hector sneered, taking a step forward. The ice crunched under his heavy soles. “I brought four inches of steel for your ribs, boy. Where’s the ledger?”

“There is no ledger,” Kellan said. He stepped forward. His feet made no sound at all on the frozen lard-pine boards. “There was only ever the horsehide book I gave to Master Eustace. The rest I made up while you were drinking at the Red Boar.”

Hector froze. The lantern shook in his hand, throwing wild, yellow shadows against the rough stone wall behind them. “You forged the Vicar’s seal.”

“It’s not hard when you know how to soft-bake the wax,” Kellan said, taking another step. He was five feet away now.

Hector raised his sword, pointing the notched tip at Kellan’s throat. “Stand back! I’ll cut your gullet open right here. I’ll tell Morrigan you tried to push me over!”

“He’d believe you,” Kellan admitted smoothly. “Morrigan knows you’re a thief, but he thinks you’re a useful thief. That’s why you have to die here. Out of sight. Without a trial.”

Hector let out a cruel, barking laugh. “Die? To a scrawny ink-washer like you? I’ve gutted three men in the lower town before you were cut from your mother’s—”

Kellan moved.

He didn’t leap. He didn’t swing a weapon. He simply closed the distance between them faster than a man could blink, his body sliding across the slick ice with terrifying, unnatural grace.

Hector swung the shortsword with all his weight, aim cut low for the ribs.

Kellan’s left hand darted out. His fingers—cold as iron spikes—snapped around Hector’s wrist, stopping the heavy steel blade dead in mid-air. The force of the block rattled the bones in Hector’s arm up to the shoulder.

Before the bailiff could scream, Kellan dropped the fingers of his right hand directly onto the side of Hector’s neck, just below the ear.

A violent, black shock hit Hector’s spine.

It wasn’t pain. It was a cold, crawling numbness that burst through his nerves like salt poured into a wound. The lantern dropped from his left hand, crashing onto the planks and rolling into the darkness below, its light snuffed out instantly. Hector’s legs turned to wet sand. His knees buckled, but Kellan held him upright by the collar of his coat with a single, unyielding arm.

“What…” Hector choked out. His tongue felt huge, dry, like a piece of salted beef stuck in his throat. He couldn’t feel his fingers. He couldn’t feel his feet. “What… did… you…”

“Nerve-corrosion,” Kellan whispered, leaning down until his pale face was an inch from Hector’s ear.

In the dark, Kellan’s eyes were no longer grey. They burned with a faint, greenish luminescence—the cold light of dead marrow pulsing beneath the thin human mask. His skin had pulled tight against his cheekbones, revealing the sharp, ivory contours of the skull beneath.

“It takes three minutes for the breath to stop,” Kellan said softly, his breath coming out cold, completely devoid of vapor. “Your lungs forget how to pull. Your heart forgets how to beat. You just sit inside your skin, watching the dark.”

Panic—wild, primitive, screeching panic—flooded Hector’s brain. With a desperate, spastic wrench of his upper body, the bailiff forced his head sideways and slammed his jaws together.

His teeth sank deep into the meat of Kellan’s right thumb.

Hector bit down with all the strength left in his jaw, wanting to tear flesh, wanting to taste blood, wanting to hurt this dead thing.

The skin gave way with a wet snap. But what came out wasn’t warm red blood. It was a thick, cold, black fluid that tasted of ash, bitter copper, and grave-dirt.

Kellan didn’t flinch. He didn’t make a sound.

He simply looked down at his bitten thumb, then shifted his gaze back to Hector’s terror-struck eyes.

“You shouldn’t have done that,” Kellan said.

With a sudden, violent wrench, Kellan snapped his thumb backward out of Hector’s mouth, tearing the bailiff’s lip on his own teeth. Then, grabbing Hector by the front of his heavy leather coat, Kellan dragged him three feet across the slick timber to the very edge of the scaffold.

The middle rail of the staging was a dry oak beam, three inches thick, notched into the uprights.

Kellan slammed Hector’s body back against it. The old wood cracked under the sudden impact, a loud, sharp snap echoing out over the empty moat.

“No…” Hector gurgled, his eyes bulging as he felt his lower half tilting out into the empty air. The numbness had reached his chest now; he couldn’t even draw a breath to scream. “No… please…”

“The Priory needs the larch timber,” Kellan murmured.

He shoved.

The broken oak rail gave way entirely with a splintering crash.

Hector plunged backward into the night.

There was no scream—only the frantic, silent rushing of cold wind as the bailiff dropped sixty feet down into the dark.

A second later came a heavy, wet thud-crunch from the bottom of the dry moat, followed by the dull rattle of loose shale sliding down the bank. Then silence returned, saved only by the persistent whistle of the sleet through the timbers.

Kellan leaned over the broken edge, looking down.

In the pitch black of the moat bottom, three figures detached themselves from the shadow of the shale heap. They moved on all fours at first, scuttling like great pale spiders across the frozen weeds. They wore tattered sackcloth smocks smeared with white wax and crushed lime-dust to break their outlines against the stone.

The scouts reached the broken body. One of them—a lean, skeletal creature with thin ivory fingers poking through rags—looked up toward the high scaffold.

It raised a hand, making a swift, three-fingered sign in the dark.

Kellan returned the gesture with his uninjured hand.

Below, the three arc-scouts grabbed Hector’s legs and shoulders. Without a sound, they dragged the dead bailiff away, pulling him into the deep drain culvert that ran beneath the priory wall toward the wild woods of the lower valley. Within ten seconds, the bottom of the moat was completely empty again, save for the dark stain on the shale where the body had landed.

Kellan turned back toward the tower door.

He looked at his right thumb. The flesh was torn back to the joint, exposing the dull, yellowed bone beneath. No blood dripped from it; the black sludge had already congealed into a dry, tarry crust.

He raised his thumb to his mouth, sucked the black crust clean, and pushed the torn skin back into place. He tapped his wrist three times, focusing the thin thread of soul-stitch magic he maintained beneath his skin. The glamour rippled, the flesh knitting together with a sickening, wet friction until the skin was smooth, pale, and completely unmarked again.

He walked to the stone stairs, his boots tapping softly against the icy floor.

Behind him, high above the dark abyss of the moat, the south tower scaffold creaked in the rising gale.

A single splintered oak rail hung suspended from its iron lashing, swinging slowly in the dark, dripping with cold night dew.