The greased twine paid out through Fen’s raw fingers with a dry, rhythmic hiss, vibrating against the lip of the scullery vent pipe as the weight of Hobb’s barley loaf pulled it downward into the blind dark.
From his niche in the western wall, Noll Vey kept every scrap of his attention fastened to that iron conduit. He could not project his sight down past the third riser—the folded seam of sleeping debt D-07a had bent the space like an iron rod curved over an anvil, shutting out his blue core awareness as cleanly as lead sheeting—but sound still crawled through the copper and iron. He could hear the splash of icy water echoing upward, hollow and cold, and the harsh, shallow breathing of a young woman who had spent twenty minutes standing in subterranean drainage with her teeth locked together to keep from crying out.
“Tessa!” Fen shouted down the opening, leaning his cheek close to the pipe rim so his words would carry without spraying moisture into the tube. “Keep your eyes on the ceiling! The linen bundle is six feet down! Do you see it?”
A long, agonizing pause stretched through the scullery. Beside the big brick oven, Hobb stood with both of his huge, flour-dusted fists clenched against his apron, his apron strings tied so tight across his round belly they looked ready to snap. Sella Rusk remained kneeling by the soaking tank, one gauntleted hand resting on the pommel of her side-sword, her eyes dark…
