Prit stood on the third stone riser below the witness rail, his small, notched rib-cage ticking softly against the leather strap of his slate pouch. In his right claw he held the stub of white filing chalk—worn down to the length of a barleycorn after nine days of siege tallies—and in his left he braced the master slate where every claim since the first rat-cord lie had been entered and audited.
Above him at the oak bar, the tall figure in the coal-ash coat looked down from the upper kitchen vent toward Hobb at the outer doorway.
“I thank you for the offer of Spoon,” the creature said to the cook, inclining its pale head with a grave courtesy that would have suited an ambassador from the seven founding dukes. “If I am permitted to work beside your hearth afterward, I will wash the spoons and hang them by the rack. For my name, however, I will take a word from the song the women sang by the copper boiler on the fourth night of the rain.”
Near the speaking-tube mount along the north wall, Tessa Dene looked up sharply. “The fourth night?” she murmured. “That was when the west culvert backed up and Mira’s girls were wringing out the wool sacks by the ash-pit.”
