Fen kept his fingers lightly resting against the coarse gray wool of Edren Dene’s sleeve. Through the fabric, he could feel the shallow, irregular vibration of the older man’s ribs—a dry, paper-thin rattling that warned of fluid gathering in the lower lobes. The air down here in the limestone well was sixty feet colder than the upper keeping rooms, heavy with the damp lime-dust kicked up by the crowd. Fen’s other hand remained tucked into the pocket of his leather apothecary apron, his fingers curled around a small corked vial of dried coltsfoot and crushed willow bark, ready the instant the weaver’s throat seized.
Across the white marble line of the witness circle, Marshal Kett stood as still as a carved granite milepost. The old soldier’s eyes were locked onto Maura’s trembling hands, where the dented tin cup of Private Hald caught the yellow glare of the phosphorus lanterns.
The silence in the amphitheater had lost its edge of panic. The angry shouts from the coopers and weavers had died down, replaced by that deep, communal quiet that settles over an infirmary when an old injury is finally unbandaged to the light.
Fen shifted his weight, his soft leather boots making no sound on the flagstones. He had spent his youth in the border valleys cleaning grease-burns, lancing boils on carters’ thumbs, and listening to old soldiers complain about their joints in tavern corners. He knew the specific stiffness in Kett’s shoulders. It was the posture of a man who…
