In the lower basin of Rookvale, panic was a luxury that working people had abandoned eight winters ago.
The sharp metal snap echoed through the ceiling beams. Then, not a single woman dropped her knife, and not a single apprentice screamed. The sixteen kitchen workers along the butcher benches simply shifted their footing, their shoulders tensing into that familiar, defensive hunch of laborers who had spent twelve years listening to the sounds of load-bearing collapse, artillery concussions, and the heavy footfalls of town patrols.
Doma Reel didn’t look up at the rafters. Her eyes moved across the floor with the cold, office speed of a triage commander.
“Curtains,” Doma commanded. Her voice dropped into a low, flat rasp that carried across the flat stone slabs without echoing. “Martha, take the northern cord. Elspeth, take the south. Drop the wet wool and dog the hem pins into the floor grommets.”
Two elderly laundresses stepped to the iron eye-bolts anchored into the brick arches flanking the bread-oven nook. They released the braided hemp ties, and two massive fire-curtains—each made of three layers of coarse, homespun sheep’s wool soaked in soaked salt water and borax—fell with a heavy, muffled whoosh.
The curtains hit the slate flags, their weighted lead hems dropping into recessed bronze floor sockets. The nook where Heth slept was instantly sealed off from the main cellar. A warm, padded, sound-damped vault that held the blasting heat of the brick ovens, blocked all drafts. Then it fully masked the smell of…
