The second series of knocks struck the outer pine gate before the echo of the first had died in the river mist.
Thump. Thump. Thump.
The rhythm was not wild. It didn’t rush. It possessed the terrible, metronomic regularity of a water-driven trip-hammer running in a dark foundry. The shakes traveled through the frozen mud of the yard, up through the dressed foundation wooden support posts of House 104. Then he rang through the soles of Len’s river boots with sickening body clarity.
Inside the whitewashed kitchen, nobody moved.
Ivara Quill stood motionless beside the water tank pump, her sound hand resting flat against the cold cast-iron casing, her knuckles white. Bram Ash had pressed his back against the wall beside the shuttered window. His hand gripped the brass metal ring of his court guard baton so hard that the leather thong was cutting into his wrist. On the stool by the peat embers, Nessa Tern sat rigid as a carved grave-post, her fingernails digging into the callused palms of her hands until beads of dark, sluggish blood welled beneath the cuticles.
Then, through the twenty feet of cold air between the wooden wall and the kitchen door, carrying through the three-inch pine planks as if they were cheesecloth, a voice called out:
