The barley loft smelled of dry chaff, ancient mouse droppings, and the sweet, dusty heat of grain that had sat unwinnowed through two wet autumns.
Tessa Dene climbed the notched timber ladder in the darkness, her knees bumping against the rough pine rungs with the quiet familiarity of an alley cat navigating an attic. She had her skirts pinned up with two wire nails, her wool apron tied tight around her waist to keep the tools from clinking, and her salvage bread knife resting loose in its oiled sheath at her left hip.
Through the narrow louvers of the high north gable, she could see down into the damp cobblestone street between the municipal warehouse and the Survey House.
Down below, the show had already begun.
Reeve Dena Holt was marching up the three granite steps of the Survey House with her municipal staff held erect before her like a siege ram. Behind her came Hobb, his face crimson beneath his bristling red whiskers as he pumped the leather hand-bellows of his iron inspection brazier with furious, theatrical vigor.
A plume of oily, yellowish-gray smoke was already billowing from the brazier’s perforated chimney, rolling across the threshold like a greasy fog. It smelled abominably of wet juniper needles, scorched green spruce, and rancid mutton grease. Even three stories up in the barley loft, the stench drifted through the eaves, sharp and sour enough to make Tessa’s nostrils sting.
