The faint tink of Tessa Dene’s fingernail against the copper mouthpiece reached Noll Vey in two places at once.
Down at the witness rail, his stone host ears heard it as a brisk, tinny click across the vaulted chamber. Up in the north wall, where his true blue core sat wedged in the dry lime niche three inches from the flared brass bell of her pipe, the sound arrived as a clean, sharp tick right against his eastern facet, like a mason’s hammer tapping a well-bedded keystone to prove the arch would carry.
I hear you, girl, Noll thought, and dipped his stone chin half an inch in acknowledgment. No disappearing acts. No swan songs. Just get the bill paid and mind the store.
Before Cale could call the final limitation clause into the Book of Witness, a low, rhythmic clack-scrape, clack-scrape echoed from the main threshold ramp at the south end of the hall.
Up at the outer doorway, where the amber shimmer of the Outer Threshold Grace Window still held the final boundary between the core-sustained court and the open hillside air, Hobb bent his knees with a loud grunt, hooked both mittened hands through the iron bail of his six-gallon soup kettle, and lugged it two inches forward so the cast-iron rim rested squarely across the white-chalked threshold sill.
