The portable slates rested against the dressed limestone beneath Noll’s core, their pale surfaces catching the cold blue glow of the quartz.
In the Grand Hall, the silence felt heavier than before Ossa Flint walked out the gate. The fire burned without crackle or pop, casting an unmoving amber light across the floor. On the slates, the white lines drawn by Prit remained startlingly sharp: ball-and-socket shoulder joints rendered with exact curvature, sliding collarbones of slate, delicate fingers tipped with nephrite, and channels where Ossa intended to thread gold nerves.
Noll looked at those lines through every facet of his waking self.
The phantom ache had grown sharper, rooted in the memory of muscle he had carried for fifty-one years before debt collector Varn’s cudgel took him down behind the stables. He could feel the ghost of his right thumb testing the edge of a silver coin that was not there. He could feel the forgotten tension in an elbow, the balance of ankles on uneven ground, the simple luxury of lifting a clay mug of warm water to a mouth that could taste well-bottom grit.
“Ten heartbeats,” Noll murmured into the lime wash.
Tessa Dene stopped sweeping near the west bench, holding Hobb’s birch broom by its peeled handle. “Ten heartbeats of what?”
