The glowing lines across the limestone floor did not look like cracks in masonry. They looked like the veins on the back of an old miner’s hand, branching from the central grating where Noll’s core pulsed below and running outward to every timber lintel, stone corbel, and chimney flue in the ruined hill fort.
Every line held a number.
Noll Vey leaned his weight onto his single stone forearm, feeling the heat of the native rock seep through the basalt skin of his knuckles. Beside him at the clerk’s desk, Cale dipped his quill twice into the inkhorn, his spectacles sliding forward as he tried to keep pace with the inscriptions carving themselves across the floor.
“It is itemized,” Cale whispered, his voice dry with disbelief. “It is not a summary fine. The Hall is auditing the physical inventory of the entire fortress.”
“Read it, Cale,” Noll said. His voice sounded like two gravel stones grinding together in an iron bucket. “Read it out so the room can hear what we bought.”
Cale swallowed, his throat moving against his stiff linen collar. He pointed the feather of his pen toward the first line of burning blue script that ran from the rail toward the rear gallery.
