For a lifelong showman who had spent fifty years reading the room through curtain slits, not knowing what people said behind the cloth was an itch right between his stone shoulder blades.
Let it itch, Vey, he told himself, shifting stone boots on the frost-slick flags of the gatehouse. A host who peeks through the keyhole doesn’t keep guests for long.
Down at the culvert outlet, Captain Arda Dorn halted at the edge of the gravel crescent. She wore battered steel half-armor over a thick wool surcoat stained with red trench clay, grey-streaked hair braided under a plain iron cap. Behind her stood two Crown camp surgeons in greased leather aprons carrying medicine chests, while tall Soldier Joss balanced a bundle of split-ash rails and notched pegs on his good shoulder.
Sella Rusk stepped forward from the tent ropes, grounded her white truce staff on the river stones, and held out both empty hands, palms up, to show her belt held neither dagger nor bow-horn.
Dorn returned the gesture by unbuckling her broadsword—scabbard, frog, and all—and handing it backward to Soldier Joss before taking a single step onto the flat shingle.
The open ditch carried Dorn’s clipped field voice up to the elder stump.
