The copper pipe gave a dry, metallic rattle as Ossa Flint leaned both hands against the wooden bench.
Through the six-foot tube, Noll heard the soft clink of the artificer’s glass lens striking the copper rim. Ossa smelled of vitriol, lamp oil, and the sharp, alkaline tang of copper sulfate—the same workshop odors she had carried into the cellar on the rainy night she had tried to clamp a brass ring around his soul.
“Vey,” she said, her voice flat, clipped, and completely stripped of the defensive pride that usually armored an academic of the Crown Guilds. “I assume you can hear me through this contraption. Miss Dene informs me you have mastered the art of nudging calcium dust.”
Noll did not make her wait. He gathered the tiny knot of tension in his crystal seam and clicked his white chalk grain once against the ledge.
Click.
Ossa gave a curt nod that creaked her leather collar. “Good. Then you can hear the disposition of my case. Magistrate Karr has just signed the warrant of conditional service.”
She pulled a folded sheet of Crown foolscap from under her traveling cloak, the heavy rag paper snapping sharply in her square, calloused fingers.
