The rain that swept across Mere on the first Tuesday of April was not the howling sleet of winter, but a soft, steady mountain drizzle that smelled of wet slate, spruce bark, and thaw-mud.
Through the copper speaking tube seated in his north wall socket, Noll listened to the town awaken beneath a different kind of noise. There were no boots marching in file, no clink of sentry pikes striking the mounting blocks, and no distant, rhythmic thumping of artillery caissons grinding the grass into black grease.
Instead, the porch of the Survey House down in the valley was loud with the argument of citizens haggling over an old wooden table.
“Set the chalk cups on the left,” Mira the weaver’s voice came drifting up through the culvert draft, carried by the acoustic tubes that still held a faint, natural resonance even without lie points to grease them. “If you put the grey chalk beside the lampblack, the schoolboys will smudge the uncertainty columns before the ink is dry.”
“The schoolboys aren’t touching the circle slates,” Reeve Dena Holt replied, her boots clicking sharply on the porch planks. “Cale, unroll the parchment. Lady Serit’s carriage is crossing the river bridge, and I want the charter posted on the timber post before the Crown bailiffs reach the tollgate.”
