“We have ten minutes,” Ivara Quill said, her voice cutting through the damp chill of the storeroom with the crisp power of an iron ruler striking slate.
She didn’t waste motion on panic. With a single sweep of her right forearm, she shoved the bowl of quartz dust sand, the saucer of animal fat, and Len’s oily polishing rags off the butcher’s table. It sent them clattering into an empty wooden lime tub. The pine surface cleared in an instant.
“If the hunter receives Signal Recognition at midnight,” Ivara said, her eyes scanning the room for materials, “every standard whistle rhythm, pipe tap, and bell set we have used between the kitchens and the Salt Ward becomes an invitation to an ambush. The double will filter out the city noise and track our messengers by the rhythm of their strikes. It will know which door is opening before the runner’s hand leaves the latch.”
Doma Reel stepped up to the table, wiping her flour-dusted hands on her grease-stained apron. Her broad face was set in grim, unbending lines, her dark eyes darting toward the open cellar door that led to the refugee dormitories. In the adjoining room, thirty families were sleeping on straw pallets, their breathing a low, collective murmur beneath the sulfur-tinged draft of the floor vents. Two small children, their chests rattling with croup, were huddled near the brick chimney pipe of the bread oven. They were wrapped in coarse horse blankets.
