Tessa Dene did not allow the silence in the hearth hall to sour into despair.
Before the miners could drift back to their cold straw pallets or begin muttering in the corners, she walked to the center of the refectory table, picked up the iron pinch-bar Renn had dropped, and leaned it upright against the stone chimney breast. The sound of the iron clanging against the masonry was sharp, deliberate, and clear.
“We have one hundred and ninety-eight hours,” Tessa said, looking across the rows of tired, shadowed faces. “That is eight days and six hours. In eight days, a good team of carters can haul twenty loads of timber from the high woods to the river. In eight days, a woman can spin four cuts of flax and weave two blankets. Sitting in the dark and waiting to be eaten is not a plan. It is just rotting early.”
She looked up at the speaking-horn above the mantel.
“Noll,” she said. “Can you hear me?”
“I hear you, Tessa,” Noll’s voice answered from the flues. The tone was steady now, purged of panic. “I am listening.”
“Then we divide the labor,” Tessa said. She turned to Sella, Ossa, Cale, and Prit, gesturing for them to join her around the scarred pine table. “If we are going to survive the stroke of the ninth day, we need answers to four separate problems, and none of us can solve all four alone.”
