“A talking stone on the hill,” Noll Vey repeated ten minutes after Tessa Dene and Prit walked back inside the gatehouse arch and shook the cold valley drizzle off their coats. “Did you hear the cadence she put on stone, Tessa? Like a turnip she found behind the flour bin in March. After I kept my mouth shut for an entire hour while that nasal clerk waved handcuffs at Cale!”
Tessa set Cale’s spare ink-horn down on the gatehouse bench, untied her wet wool shawl, and hung it on a wooden peg beside the speaking tube. Her cheeks were still bright red from the wind at the boundary milestone, and there was a smudge of black iron-gall ink across the knuckle of her left thumb.
“Reeve Holt kept four hundred people from walking into Vane’s cellar,” Tessa said, picking up an oiled rag to wipe the rain from the flat of her salvage bread knife. “And she did it without giving Senior Deputy Bardon a single word he could take back to the Survey House and call dungeon enthrallment. What did you want her to do—kneel in the mud by the horse trough and kiss your boundary post?”
“A simple nod toward the battlements would not have sprained the parish neck,” Noll grumbled through the mortar seam above the bench. Deep in the wall, his blue facets shifted with a restless, prickly heat he did not entirely care to examine. “We spent the last of my reserve points shaping eight…
