The afternoon light in the hall was the color of skimmed milk, cold and flat against the unwashed timber tables.
In his core niche above the cistern, Noll Vey felt the hours slipping away like dry barley through a split sack. The core’s internal clock did not tick; it hummed with the slow, rhythmic subsidence of settling masonry. Every hour that passed without an incoming coin of witness belief took a measurable slice of his remaining strength.
Prit stood upon a three-legged stool beside the public hearth, his sleeves rolled up to his sharp elbows. He had spent the midday hours washing the old delver rules off the great grey wall slate, scrubbing away the fee schedules for the Nine Knight Room and the Room of Mirrors with a wet rag dipped in vinegar. Now, holding his white filing chalk between thumb and forefinger, he was drawing a ledger that looked far more like a mortuary roll than a tavern account.
“Item one,” Prit said, rapping the chalk against the stone with a sharp clack. “The fuel-less hearth. By the terms of the Right of Occupancy, as established in the second month of this holding, the core must maintain civil heat for all recognized guests who have broken bread within the perimeter. Current daily cost: four units of craft force. Without it, the water in the cistern freezes solid before midnight, the bread dough refuses to rise, and our crystal-legged friend Renn dies of lung chill in forty-eight hours.”
