The tallow candle had burned down to a greasy pool in its tin saucer before Prit finished scraping the caked red clay from the final three notches.
Outside, the wind had died to a freezing stillness that held the valley in iron jaws. Through the high embrasures of the gallery, the night sky showed as a bruised purple above the northern ridges.
Prit brought the grey audit chalk to the fifth notch on the slate’s bottom margin. He dragged the greasy mineral across the groove with steady pressure.
A fifth line of pale, phosphor-green script flared into the gloom.
“Record D-07e,” Prit announced, his voice raspy with dried limestone dust. “Uttered on Night Six, just after midnight. Witness: Acheta domesticus, a black cricket sheltering in the hearth seam. Assertion: The third flagstone from the fire chimes like a cathedral bell whenever a man with an untruth in his heart sets his foot upon the mortar.”
Noll sighed through the chimney stones. “The cricket was chirping beside my ear. Every time I tried to close my eyes, that cursed bug gave a scrape like an iron nail on a tin kettle. I told it that if it kept singing while I was trying to die, the stone would ring every time a liar walked past and scare it into the ash pit.”
