The lower ditch gate smelled of wet ash, river mud, and cold laundry lye.
Through the foundation stone beneath the western drainage sluice, Noll Vey felt every boot-fall as Cale and Sella Rusk picked their way along the muddy lip of the ditch. The morning was grey and raw. Mist curled off the river reeds in thin white ribbons, mingling with the bitter smudge from the scorched cedar ridge above.
Noll had projected his awareness down through the culvert masonry, using the acoustic channel of the drainage pipe to listen while keeping his stone host body stationed in the Grand Hall above. Beside the upper grate in the cellar, Prit knelt with his slate propped against his knees, his grey audit chalk poised to catch whatever rolled up from the watercourse.
At the lower fence, where the fort’s old iron willow grates met the perimeter brush of the army encampment, a figure in a stained linen apron emerged from behind a row of overturned transport carts.
It was Tilda. The Survey House laundry servant moved with the quick, unhurried caution of a woman who had spent fifteen years carrying heavy wicker baskets past bailiffs and sentries without ever drawing an eye. She had a basket of damp soldier tunics balanced on her left hip, but beneath the folded grey wool her right hand was tucked deep into her apron pocket.
