The lower gallery smelled of damp limestone, cold tallow, and the faint, metallic tang of the seventh day’s frost creeping down the ventilation shaft.
Tessa Dene stood three paces back from the ninth door with her arms folded over her shawl, her boots planted squarely on Prit’s white chalk line. Beside her, Prit held his slate at the ready, his small bone knees knocking together once in the draft before he braced his heels against a flagstone joint. Above the unmortared arch, the pale inscription had ticked down another two hours as the morning watch wore on:
LAST GUEST DEBT DUE IN ONE HUNDRED SEVENTY-THREE HOURS.
Noll Vey drew his sight down into the western wall seam opposite the door. He felt strangely exposed under Tessa’s gaze, even though he had no face for her to look at and only a hairline crack in the lime mortar for a mouth.
“Go on,” Tessa said quietly, nodding toward the sealed stone panel. “Call it to the seam. And if I hear one note of that warm uncle voice you used on the turnpike bailiffs in Greyford, I’m walking upstairs.”
“That voice kept me out of the stocks in four counties, Tessa,” Noll murmured, though there was no real sting in his protest. “When a man has spent thirty years greasing axles with his tongue, plain water feels unnatural in the mouth.”
