Tessa Dene did not remember unhooking her belt from the hemp guide rope, and she did not remember dropping the last twelve feet of the culvert ladder into the gravel runnel.
She only knew the cold mason’s hammer was still clenched in her right fist as she took the cellar steps three at a time, her soaked wool skirt slapping against her shins and ditch water flying from her boot heels. Behind her in the narrow stone passage, Noll Vey’s six-hundred-pound limestone frame thundered against the flagstones like a rolling boulder, with Renn’s ash staff clicking furiously behind him.
“Out of the doorway, Sen!” Tessa shouted, catching the rough oak frame of the lower warm room with her free hand and swinging herself inside.
Eleven-year-old Sen scrambled back from the low pine bench, her face chalk-white under her braided hair. By the smokeless amber brazier in the center of the room, Fen was already on his knees with his canvas herb satchel spilled open across the flags, his fingers tearing at the linen ties of Edren Dene’s grey wool shirt.
“Hold his shoulders, Tessa,” Fen said sharply. “Don’t let him pitch forward onto the box.”
Tessa dropped the mason’s hammer onto the stones—where it rang with a dull clink—and caught her father under both arms.
