The bells woke him before dawn, and they were wrong.
Alistair had lived in Verissan long enough to know its bells the way a sailor knows a coast in fog.
There was the dawn peal, the market open, the council sitting, the broken doubled clang for fire.
This was none of them.
It was slow, and even, and it came from every tower in the city at the same moment, the way bells only ring when someone has agreed on the meaning beforehand.
He dressed before he had decided to. Following that, he went down to the common room.
The innkeeper stood at the window with a cloth in his hand, having forgotten he was holding it.
"What is that pattern?" Alistair asked, keeping Tobian's idle voice on.
The innkeeper did not turn from the glass. "The High Justicar is in the city, my lord. The bells tell the council he has come, and they ring it for no one else."
"He must be a great man, then, to be worth waking a whole city before the sun is even up."
