The wooden rack beside the Grand Hall doorway held six brass passage discs, each stamped with the true map of the hill road and polished smooth by the thumbs of grain carters, weavers, and healers going back and forth to Mere.
Noll Vey lifted the rack from its iron wall-pegs with his blunt stone fingers, carried it across the flagstones to the broad hearthstone, and set it down beside the older copper-bound charter slate he had signed in the first week after Prit crawled out of the cellar floor crack.
Around the hall, the afternoon work had paused. Sella Rusk stood near the bench with her shield slung at her hip and dry lime dust still whitening her knuckles from the west gate. Fen sat on a low stool beside her, rolling boiled linen bandages into neat cylinders for his river clinic basket, while Sergeant Berr stood at parade rest by the soot-blackened chimney pier. Since the communal name-reading at the gate had steadied the old border guard’s bones against the March Ledger’s ink, Berr’s left hand no longer flickered at the wrist; his yellowing finger-bones rested firm and solid on the pommel of his notched service sword.
Across the hearthstone stood Prit.
