The delegation arrived on a Bloomist holy day, which was either coincidence or diplomacy, and Ryn had been in the kingdom long enough to know that nothing in the Anvil was coincidence.
Three Crucible officials. Not priests — *administrators*. The distinction came through in their clothing: priests wore vestments and carried the tools of their pastoral work. Administrators wore the formal grey of the Crucible's institutional apparatus and carried ledgers. They had been sent from Ashenveil to conduct the annual Compliance Review — a bureaucratic process by which the Crucible ensured that every temple in the kingdom operated within the doctrinal, structural, and iconographic standards that the Ordinist framework required.
On the Pale Coast, the Compliance Review was a tense performance. Both sides knew their lines. Neither believed the other's.
