The Sealed Burden

The Sealed Burden is the object entrusted to the Dawnward Company under laws that forbid full disclosure even to most of its bearers. It is valuable less as treasure than as leverage: rulers, exiles, priests, and warlords all believe possession would let them end one crisis by beginning another. The Company’s first discipline is therefore refusal — refusing crowns, rescue, revenge, and every easy use of the thing they carry.