At half-past ten on that clear October morning, a soft, dry mountain breeze came down from the northern ridges of the Guard range.
It was a gentle wind, scrubbed of dust by forty miles of alpine pine forests. He smelled of sun-warmed needles, dry mountain fern, and the tart, sweet perfume of ripe russet apples curing in the orchard lofts.
The draft blew directly through the open casement beside Len Vey’s work-table. It caught the hem of the white linen curtains that Cira had washed and hung two days before. The linen billowed into the room with a slow, rippling flutter, brushing against the edge of the pine desk and rustling the clean sheets of correspondence resting in the sorting trays.
On the table before Len lay an unsigned delivery receipt.
It was an ordinary country transit voucher, printed on crisp, white rag paper by the Free Wards press in Tram Ward. It recorded the delivery of three heavy wooden crates containing seventy-two panes of heat-softened residential salt-glass, made in Melli Dorn’s kilns, transported across the Crow’s Throat by freight wagon. Then it consigned to the Highfield township schoolhouse for the renovation of the children’s study hall.
The ink was black, clean, and dry.
