The cold running through Noll Vey’s right stone arm was not the chill of the buried Hall, but the freezing wind of the high north ridge, carried down through seventy fathoms of limestone along the line of the third anchor cable.
He stood with his single stone palm pressed flat against the witness rail. Where his left shoulder ought to have joined a second arm, there was only a rough fracture of gray granite, pitted by the noon artillery blast that had sheared the stone away when he stepped over Sen. The core chip seated in his chest cavity pulsed with a slow, heavy rhythm, its blue light leaking through the hairline mortar seams across his ribs. Every pulse brought him the taste of ridge sleet, horse sweat, and the sharp iron tang of nine hundred leveled pikes standing on the black rock above the timber mill.
Beside him at the rail, Prit held his slate braced against his small ribs. The imp’s bone fingers were dusted to the knuckles with gray audit chalk, his dark eyes fixed on the red hazard line that separated the ninth doorway from the stone floor of the assembly.
“Forty minutes on the threshold restraint, Noll,” Prit whispered, his voice like dry leaves scraping over slate. “The red chalk is flaking near the center joint. If the ridge companies hold their battle order when the bell sounds, the entity behind the timber will not ask who gave the command. It will simply take the…
