Excerpt:

The view was breathtaking. From up here, with the glittering city under a resplendant, layered sunrise, the world looked fresh, and clean and new. From up here, Ilar could almost forget that the glittering topside of the city was only set atop the multi-tiered underlevels filled with poverty and squalor away from the light of the sun. He clould almost forget that the beutiful scattered rays of colored sunlgith was caused by the linger smoke of the raging brushfires outside the city itself.
Almost forget, how old, and dirty and tired the world was.
"Beautiful, isn't it?" Ilar whirled at the voice from behind, his arm already raised in salute. He hadn't intended to be still staring out the window when his superior came in. He must have been staring longer than he thought. Ilar immediately applied his trained observation on the man who had just entered. He was a tall man, much taller than Ilar's rather dimunitive height, be the way he carried himself made him look even bigger and more impressive than he was. He was very well-dressed in a rather subdued sort of way, a man at ease with how he looked. Ilar rather envied that, although he tried not to show it. "Yes sir, it is quite beautiful." He responded, his arm still rigid. "I appologise for staring."
"Oh, at ease." The man said, waving away the appology. "You can hardly be five-hundred feet in the air over top of the greatest city in the world without giving at least a peek. Please, sit down." He gestured to one of the plush chairs of the conference room. Everything in the room seemed to shine, from the leather upholstery to the rich, carpeted floors to the solid mahogany table. In the Pinnacle of Governing of Amlan, everything was finer.

Ilar took one of the chairs at the end of the table, and the man took the one opposite him, plunking down a larget packet of documents, from wich he lifted a sheat of paper that Ilar recognized as his own dossier. "Ilar Sevethen," The man read. "Age twenty-four, sex male, affiliation Enforcers, rank under-sergeant." His eyebrows rose somewhat. "Height, five-foot five." He looked up. "Dropped on your head a few too many times as a child?"
"We lived under a mountain, sir." Ilar answered with a forced smile. It wasn't as if he hadn't heard the joke countless times before. "Falling rocks where always a hazard." Despite the well-rehearsed nature of the joke, the man still chuckled as he continued. "Hair color black, eye color green. Joined the Enforcers at age twenty, and advanced steadily through the ranks ever since, with an exemplery record, and finally arriving at under-sergeant for our station chief in Kiveth," The man at last closed the file with a punctuating slap. "And is now probably wondering how and why someone of his modest paygrade would receive an order to meet with anonymous official in a secure room in the Pinnacle of government."
It was true, Ilar had been wondering a great deal about that. Normally people of his rank would never even be near the place unless they were on guard duty. “Well, it’s quite simple.” The man continued. “You’re here because we have a job that needs doing, and we- or rather, someone very important, believes you are exactly the right person for this job.” The silence that followed the statement was rather profound. After a few moments, Ilar finally got up the courage to voice his thoughts. “Sir, I’m… honored, of course, and will do whatever the Jurisdiction requires of me… But I have to ask, exactly what is this job that needs doing?”
Ilar was concerned that his tone might have failed him right then and there, but the man merely smiled a thin smile, leaning back in his chair. “very wise. Get all the information before you jump in. You are looking more and more like just the man we need. Everything that is said in this room from this point on will be of the uttermost secrecy, and you will not be allowed to repeat it to anyone, under pain of death for you and your family. Do you understand?” Ilar nodded. Of course he understood. Learning to keep a secret was the first thing he had learned upon joining the Enforcers. “First of all, my name is Arturo. I’m the Jurisdiction’s director of a rather special project. In fact, it is this project that originally gave the Jurisdiction its power. It’s called The Writ.”

. . .

“From what I could tell, they coded it "The Writ." Taraak was saying, standing at a parade-rest position in the middle of the council room. As usual, he felt naked without the comforting wieght of his weapons about him, and also as usual, the council's reluctance to feel safe around him rather rankled a bit. After all, had he not served them well these past six years? Would he ever belong? He shook it off. Think about it after the debrief.
"And what would this code refer to?" Asked Jora, of the agricultural division. Taraak turned to him. "As you know sir, the jurisdiction holds sway over our lands through the power of the information that it has on all of the citizens. They are crippled because they can keep no secrets. While we have raged against this for years, we never really stopped to consider just where all this information is stored. Sirs, from what I gathered in that house, The Writ is just that place." A murmur ran through the assembly at this, and Taraak knew that he had all of there attention. "Sirs, as you can see from the copy of the documents in front of you, it is clearly evidenced of the existance of a single repository of information, hidden and guarded heavily. This, is nothing less than the source of the jurisdiction's power." There was silence as each of the ten council members read briefly over the documents. Taraak had painstakingly written them up from his memories of those he had read in Trelaim, had one of the mages copy it ten times for this meeting. "And this is all entirely accurate to what you saw there? I understand that you did not actually take the documents with you." Piped up Elis, of logistics. She was a short, mousy old woman. "No Ma'am." Taraak answered evenly. "Had I taken them, I would have only tainted the intel. What you hold in your hand however is for all intents and purposes exactly what I read. I'm sure all in this room know of my..." He paused a moment. What exactly could he call it? "-Ability."
There was silence for a moment, the sort of awkward silence that he was used to. Yes, no one knew quite what to make of hiim in that respect.
"Well, I think we can all agree that this is indeed some impressive intel." Spoke in Tarish, of operations, the intricate tribal braids of his grey hair bobbing as he spoke. "It was well done on your part. Now the question that's foremost on my mind is, what do you propose we do about it?"