At dawn, the frost lay thick as spilled salt on the cart ruts, and every instinct Noll Vey had acquired in fifty-one years of mortal hustling screamed at him to dress the house.
Just a little amber glow in the archway mortar. Just a low, comforting chord hummed through the threshold flagstones in the key of F, the one old church organists used when the collection plate went round so the parish felt solemn and generous at the same time. Better yet, a canvas banner hung from the gatehouse lintel to keep the morning wind off Sergeant Berr’s rusted collar and hide the way Fen’s white linen bandage sagged over the half-vanished wrist bone.
No, Noll told himself, and bit down on the urge so hard his core facets ached in their niche. Tessa has that bread knife in her apron, and she meant every word about the lantern cords.
Instead, Noll reached out with his Threshold-rank craft sense, gripped the counterweights of the main gate mechanism inside the gatehouse wall, and drew the heavy oak-and-iron doors wide open. The cold hinges groaned—an honest, ungreased iron complaint—and came to rest flat against the inner stone piers. No coloured sparks danced in the lime. No music hummed in the drain grates. Above the arch, the outer notice slate Prit had chalked the night before hung plain and grey in the thin winter daylight:
