Through the open eastern doorway, where the lantern horn cast a wedge of yellow tallow light across the snowbank, Noll Vey watched the child’s mittened hand hold out the strip of bright blue wool.
Because Sergeant Berr stood three paces outside the entry sill, beyond the five-room boundary of Hearth rank, Noll could not feel the flagstones beneath the dead guard’s boots. He had to watch the scene the old-fashioned way, peering from the damp mortar seams of the eastern jamb like an actor squinting through a peep-hole in the stage wing.
On the threshold stone directly below Noll’s sight-line, Sella Rusk had stopped with her fingers half-raised toward the doorpost. Behind her by the water bucket, Fen held a rolled linen bandage suspended over the basin, and Tessa Dene, who had just come out of the inner passage carrying a fresh iron hinge-pin, halted beside the rope stanchion.
Outside in the swirling white drift, the six-year-old girl on the back of the cabbage sled gave the blue muffler an impatient little shake.
“Your neck’s bare, Watchman,” the child piped, her high, clear voice cutting easily through the hiss of sleet on the lantern glass. “My gran says if you stand by the river chute without wool under your chin, the gorge-cough gets in your ribs.”
