The plaster wall of the Nine Knight gallery came down with a hollow, powdery crash that coated Noll Vey’s limestone veins in lime dust.
It had taken him three weeks during his first winter to shape those nine knightly reliefs along the western corridor. He had spent hours smoothing the mock-chivalric shields with wet thumb-strokes of mortar, molding heraldic lions whose jaws gaped in theatrical fury and carving plaster scrolls that promised phantom glory to any gullible delver wandering up from Mere. In the old days, a stage illusionist guarded his painted flats with his life. If an audience saw the bare lath behind the palace backdrop, the box office went dry.
Now Tessa Dene had her crowbar wedged behind the third knight’s gilded shield, heaving her weight against the iron bar until the plaster tore free in brittle chunks.
“Watch the footing, Hal,” Tessa called over her shoulder. “The mortar dust is slick as wet tallow on the flags.”
Hal, his bandaged hands wrapped in clean rags, used his forearms to steady an empty wicker hamper while two younger haulers shoveled the fallen rubble. None of them looked at the crumbling plaster faces with reverence. To the twelve men who had been dragged out of Vane’s chorus drift, stone was not a mystery to be admired; it was sixty pounds of dead weight that had to be shifted before a man could lie down without freezing.
