The outer wrapping of the parcel was made from heavy, raw, unwhitened flax canvas, double-folded along the margins and stitched through with four-ply waxed hemp thread that had been pulled taut with an awl.
Len Vey laid the parcel flat in the center of the pine frame stand table beneath the yellow halo of the animal fat candle.
The canvas was stiff, cold to the touch. Then it coated with a thin, water-resistant glaze of boiled mutton fat and pine rosin to protect the inner paper from mountain drizzle. It had traveled two hundred miles across the high northern ridges in four days, passed from rider to rider at three different postal staging inns, hidden beneath wagon floorboards. Then it smuggled through the drainage under-road drains of the Redstone Boundary canopy. Yet Len leaned over the wood. Then, the fragrance that rose from the damp hemp was not the sulfur smoke of Rookvale. It was the clean, pungent scent of dry mountain pine needles, woodsmoke from birch logs, cured harness leather, and the crisp autumn frost of the high Tern Valley.
Around the table, the small pantry was fully silent.
Doma Reel stood at Len’s right shoulder, her thick, flour-dusted hands resting flat against the pine timber, her gray eyes fixed on the parcel. Ivara Quill stood at his left, her canvas land-mapper’s satchel slung across her ribs. Her single hand held her four-inch razor knife poised above the table. Behind them, Bram Ash barred the narrow doorway with his…
