By two bells past sunrise, the lane outside the Bastion’s main arch smelled of wet sheep wool, cold mud, and the sour sweat of thirty neighbors trying to undo a month of honest trade before the Survey House clerks finished their breakfast.
Tessa Dene stood beside the oak gate-post with Hobb’s kitchen delivery slates stacked on an upturned flour barrel in front of her. Inside the courtyard behind her, Prit had his small, bony shoulder braced against the iron latch-bar of the main timber doors, trying with all his six-master steward’s devotion to slide the heavy bolt into its stone socket.
“Mistress Tessa,” Prit hissed, his clawed heels skidding on the damp cobbles as he threw his weight against the iron bar, “they are demanding that we erase completed ledger entries! In sixty-eight years of keeping books for wild holdings, I have never scrubbed a verified delivery after the turnips were already in the soup! If I bar the gate, they cannot hand back the chits!”
Tessa reached out with one hand, caught the back of Prit’s moth-eaten collar, and lifted him three inches off the flagstones until his bone toes dangled over a puddle.
“Take your hand off the bolt, Prit,” she said.
