The yellow glare of the tallow lanterns caught the wet black edges of Cale’s fresh ink, turning the names of the three dead soldiers into three clean cuts across the vellum.
Noll Vey leaned his consciousness outward through the chimney lintel, feeling the silence that settled over the Grand Hall. It was not the hollow stillness of a theater waiting for a trapdoor to spring; it was the quiet of forty tired people gathered around an open hearth, listening to the crackle of pine knots while the truth sank into their bones.
Beside the fire, Sergeant Berr stood erect against the wall in his ancient, tarnished mail coat. The undead royal guard sergeant did not breathe, but his gauntleted fingers rested lightly on the pommel of his notched broadsword. Across the room, Renn sat with his wooden peg unstrapped, rubbing the scarred flesh of his knee where the cold seeped in from the stone floor. Near the water butt, Ossa Flint kept her head down, her single grey eye tracing the wood grain of the bench while her bandaged socket wept pale fluid through the linen.
Prit stepped up onto the bench beside Cale. With slow, ceremonial care, the bone imp lifted the two grounded oath-silver tokens from their oiled canvas and laid them side by side against the edge of the Book of Witness.
