The small, vaulted office of the laundry keeper was crammed with five elderly men and women sitting on rough benches, their weathered hands resting on their knees. The air smelled of drying wool, wood smoke from a small fire bowl, and the sharp, vinegar tang of ink drying on coarse rag paper. At a battered pine table, Town Auditor Varo Nenn sat with his green leather ledger book unclasped, his steel pen scratching rapidly across ruled columns, his face lit up by a single horn lantern.
Pella stood by the door, her back braced against the lime-washed wall, watching the process. Old Hob, the chief stoker who had tended the dungeon coppers for forty years, leaned forward, his knuckles scarred by decades of coal burns. Beside him sat Martha and three washerwomen, their faces pale but resolute. They weren’t high-born citizens with legal advocates. They were daily-wage workers who knew that testifying against a master summoner could cost them their bread chits.
‘State the date again for the record, Hob,’ Varo Nenn said, dipping his pen into the square inkpot. ‘And speak to the physical facts, not your suspicions.’ Hob cleared his throat with a raspy cough. ‘It was the second week of February, master clerk. The ground was frozen two inches deep outside. We went down to the cold root cellar to fetch winter turnips for the guild dinner. The turnips were hot to the touch. The mud between the floor stones was steaming. By third bell, the turnips…
