The words dissolved before they could cross Noll’s stone teeth.
His jaw stayed parted, the rough edges of his lips frozen in the shape of a practiced smile that had no warmth behind it. He had wanted to tell them that an illusionist with one sleeve was twice as trustworthy as a man with two, because the audience could always see where the second ace wasn’t hidden. He had rehearsed variations of the joke in the split second after the limestone sheared, searching for the cadence that would lift terror out of the room like a silk handkerchief from an empty palm. For fifty years, laughter had been his shield against landlords, bailiffs, and creditors; whenever the ceiling began to splinter, he had made a joke of the dust.
Then a warm, calloused hand came down hard upon his right shoulder.
Hesta Quill did not tap or pat. She planted her palm squarely against the carved stone curve of his collar, gripping the granite with fingers stiff and blistered from the jack threads. She did not look at the ruined hearth, and she did not look down at the grey gravel of his shattered forearm scattered across the soot.
She looked directly into the hollow sockets of his stone face, where the blue light of Core Chip #2 flickered in the gloom.
