Hesta Quill had never needed a dungeon core to hold a crowd in the rain; all she had ever needed was three pine planks, a loud drum, and a bailiff foolish enough to stand where she could see him.
Half an hour after her patched red-and-gilt wagon rattled back into Mere from the blocked southern pass, Hesta did not drive her team up the hill to the fort. Instead, she pulled her two shaggy mares up right beside the iron market well in the middle of the town square, unlashed three wide spruce stage-boards across a pair of empty cider casks, and had her boy beat a brisk double-roll on the big brass kettle-drum before Senior Deputy Bardon’s patrols could even walk down from the Survey House porch.
Up in the Bastion gatehouse, Noll Vey listened through the limestone foundation seam and the brass tokens sitting on the weavers’ windowsills around the square, while Tessa Dene and Hobb watched through Sella’s field glass from the eastern embrasure.
“What is she doing down there?” Hobb muttered, squinting into the drizzle as townsfolk began emerging from doorways and alleys at the sound of the drum. “Vane’s patrols locked up two carters at eight bells for arguing over a road pass, and she’s setting up a trestle stage right in front of the Quarantine board!”
