Four nights running, the dry stone culvert below the old timber mill had smelled of nothing worse than wet moss, cold iron silt, and the sour yeast of Hobb’s pocket rolls.
Tessa Dene knelt three yards inside the drainage arch, her knees resting on river slate to keep damp from seeping through her wool trousers. Above her head, frost feathered along the mortar joints, biting through her mittens. Outside, sleet fell through bare alder branches with a dry whisper, ticking against the dead fern fronds that choked the gully.
In her coat pocket, her fingers turned the salted crust of a double figure-eight twist. A double twist meant dry beans; a braided three-loop was an order for Fen’s bitter-root wash; a single overhand knot meant someone at the mill had hidden coarse grey flour behind the water wheel. It was simple, silent baker’s work. A Crown customs clerk might pinch an apprentice’s sleeve, but nobody in Orren had written a statute against carrying supper in a pocket.
The owl whistle should have come at the second bell after sundown.
The second bell had rung down in Mere an hour ago, carrying up the river in thin, flat clangs. The third bell was already gathering in the valley mist.
