Noll Vey kept his broad limestone palm flat against the cold stone jamb of the ninth door and looked at the unlatched keyhole four inches from his eyes.
“If I tell you I had a noble philosophy when I chalked your name on the slate,” Noll said quietly, “that crooked spoon on the napkin will probably curl up and bite my ankle.”
Behind him on the lower step, Tessa Dene gave a tiny, dry huff through her nose. Prit stood beside the folded flax napkin, his slate tucked under his arm and his small yellowed skull tilted upward in silent attention.
“The truth of it,” Noll told the bog-oak panels, his voice grinding low and even through the mortar seam across his jaw, “is that five nights ago I was a terrified old fraud watching eight thousand soldiers march up the valley with siege engines and collar chains. I had already used up the rat-adder, the blind rubble hound, the briar spears, and poor Sergeant Berr’s dead regiment. None of them were big enough to make an auditor like Orin Vane pull back on his reins.”
He shifted his thumb half an inch along the rough tool-marks chiselled into the jamb thirty years ago by some forgotten border mason.
