On the tenth morning, when the March Ledger’s clerks and leather-coated bailiffs were supposed to march up the hill road with wax seals and an iron lockbox, the mountain sent three feet of wet grey wool instead.
Noll Vey watched it come down through the mortar seams of his outer entry room. He had spent fifty-one years walking county roads in split boots, and he knew the difference between a theatrical snowfall—the fat, lazy white Goose-down kind that made tavern windows look warm and persuaded drunks to toss an extra copper into a hat—and an Orren gorge blizzard. This storm came sideways off the upper slate ridges with the flat, whistling malice of a bailiff’s whip. It packed the ruts of the cart track, buried the elderberry scrub by the ruined west wall, and plastered the newly laid roof slates that Jori and Corin had nailed down the afternoon before.
Inside the Grand Hall, the fuel-less hearth burned with its steady, smokeless amber glow, keeping the flagstones dry ten paces in every direction. Hobb stood beside the iron cauldron with a wooden paddle tucked under his arm, listening to the wind boom across the chimney throat.
“Well,” the cook said, scraping a crust of dried barley from the pot rim with his thumbnail, “if the tax collectors are climbing the ditch in this, they’ve got better nails in their soles than I had in the army.”
