Down in the outer ring of the buried Hall of Witness, forty feet below the frost-bitten courtyard where Mere’s winter wind whistled through the ruined crenels, the air was as dry and cold as old oats stored in an iron bin.
Noll Vey walked with slow, deliberate strides, his limestone soles making a heavy scritch-clack against flagstones that had not felt a cart wheel in three centuries. His carved basalt knees clicked at every second step where iron pins met lime shims, a sound he had come to tolerate because sitting upstairs as an immobile blue jewel in a ceiling niche left everyone else carrying the hazard alone. Behind him came Tessa Dene, her iron-bound lantern casting swinging ribs of yellow light across the curved passage, her free hand resting on the pommel of her salvage bread knife.
“Watch the riser on the third step, Noll,” Tessa murmured. “Mortar washed out in the autumn rains. If you crack another ankle dowel tonight, I’m leaving you on the landing until breakfast.”
“I am treating every stone in this stair with filial piety,” Noll rumbled out of his horizontal throat seam. “A showman who breaks his props before the curtain rises is an amateur.”
