Tessa Dene did not take her hand from the wooden handle of her bread knife as she walked up the riser steps toward the officer tier.
The knife was seven inches of honest salvage iron, forged by her own father in the scrap smithy behind the timber mill three winters back. It bore no royal mark, no excise stamp, and no auditor’s tally; by decree of the town charter, it was an exempt domestic blade, fit only for cutting salt pork, slicing rye loaves, and trimming green hazel withes. But the balance in her palm was true, and the oiled cherry wood was worn smooth by three hundred days of hard work.
She climbed past the benches of the Mere weavers and carpenters, her heavy leather boots making a steady, dry sound on the limestone treads. Below in the well, Noll Vey stood with his single stone arm resting on the witness rail, his granite torso quiet now, the blue fire quenched. Prit was sitting on the lowest step, his slate resting against his knees, his gray audit chalk held ready in his bone fingers.
When Tessa reached the upper tier, she stopped two paces from Major Brek.
The siege engineer looked up at her with red-rimmed, exhausted eyes. His dark blue tunic was stiff with dried trench mud along the hem, but the collar was fastened high and tight with three small silver hooks. Beneath the stiff wool band, where the skin of his throat was dark with stubble…
