Cale came through the arched doorway of the Grand Hall like a gust of mountain sleet, his clerk’s coat flapping around his shins, the blackened sheet of butcher’s paper clutched in his ink-stained fingers.
“Sella! Fen! Clear the bench!” Cale called out, his voice hoarse from shouting up the cellar well. “Put down the bandage shears and look at this!”
Around the fuel-less hearth, where the smokeless amber glow kept the high timber rafters dry, the room had been quiet save for the scrape of Fen’s pewter mortar pestle and the soft murmur of Hobb sorting salt-pork shanks on the sideboard. Fen looked up, a twist of dried willow bark still pinched between his fingers. Sella Rusk, who had been sitting on an upturned oats tub splicing a waxed bowstring, laid her awl across her knee and squinted at the paper.
Noll Vey walked into the hall two paces behind Tessa, his limestone boots striking the flagstones with measured, heavy thuds. Each step sent a tiny vibration up through his stone ankles, yet inside his hollow chest cavity Core Chip #2 throbbed with a cool, steady light.
“Set it on the trestle, Cale,” Noll said, gesturing with a blunt limestone hand. “Hobb, shift that crock of lard before someone spills grease across four centuries of royal ink.”
