Morning came up over the frost-rimed slate roofs of Mere with the flat, greasy smell of wet wool burning on cottage hearths.
Noll Vey felt the smoke before he saw it. With the hill fort now anchored at Bastion rank, his awareness no longer stopped at the outer ditch or the timber gatehouse arch. It ran down through the deep limestone ribs of the hill, following the cold spring channels and the cracked roof-slates of the old silver drift until the town square below registered as a faint, rhythmic tremor in his lowest masonry. He could feel the iron market well at the center of the cobbles like a cold tooth driven into the valley’s jaw.
Around that tooth, four Survey House bailiffs in oiled leather coats were driving two square-headed iron nails into the oak notice-board beside the well-sweep.
“Prit,” Noll said through the speaking seam above the gatehouse bench, keeping his voice low so he would not wake Luma’s eight children sleeping beside the inner hearth. “Tell me my eyes are full of nitre. Tell me that parchment is an autumn turnip tariff.”
Prit stood on an upturned lime bucket by the eastern embrasure, his moth-eaten steward’s coat buttoned to his chin against the valley mist. He held Sella Rusk’s brass field glass pressed to one hollow eye socket, his bony fingers steady on the cold tube. His slate hung from his hip alongside his three chalk stubs—white for daily filing, grey for audit, and the red hazard…
