“Read the generous parts first,” Noll Vey said from the western wall as the iron bar dropped into its brackets across the outer door. “I always like to hear how much money I am being given before I find out which pocket they plan to cut off my coat.”
At the low stone desk beneath the core niche, Prit adjusted his moth-eaten cuffs, laid his white and grey chalk stubs side by side on the ink-tray, and flattened the cream-colored vellum folio with both bone palms.
The rest of the household gathered around the yellow pool of the tallow lamp. Sella Rusk leaned one shoulder against the corner of the filing rack, her arms folded over her leather jerkin. Fen stood beside her with his hands still smelling of pine-tar and willow wash, while Hobb came over from the banked soup kettle wiping his iron ladle on a dry towel. Near the inner arch, Sergeant Berr stepped in from the snow-swept courtyard, pulling the heavy canvas hood back an inch from his bare skull; tucked neatly beneath his collarbone, protected from the wet mountain wind, sat the strip of bright blue wool the farm child had given him on the sled road the day before.
