The animal fat candle sputtered once, throwing a smear of grease across the corner of the frame stand table, before the flame steadied into a thin yellow needle.
Len Vey adjusted his grip on the second folio. His right thumb pressed against the margin. He felt the rough deckle edge where Cira had torn the sheet from the ledger book in the Highbank tavern. His left arm, strapped against his chest with stiff hemp cord and split ash laths, sent a hot, rhythmic throbbing into his shoulder. Every pulse of blood in his wrist blood vessel reminded him of the copper chisel he had driven into the feeder channel three hours ago. The bone remained cracked. The flesh around the stitches was dark purple, swollen tight against the binding.
Beside him, Doma Reel kept her broad palm flat on the table, her knuckles scarred by forty years of wood smoke and scalding salt water. Ivara Quill stood at his elbow. Her single hand held her iron measuring tongs upright like a weighted drop-line. Neither of them spoke. The air in the pantry carried the heavy, humid heat of boiling broth from the copper vats outside, mixed with the sharp vinegar smell of the ink drying on the thick parchment.
