Late autumn came to the high pass with a sharp, silver frost that whitened the dead bracken along the ditch and crusted the horse-troughs with brittle ice.
Inside the Grand Hall, the iron fire-dogs held a steady bed of split birch, throwing long ribbons of yellow light across the limestone floor. The crowd of drovers and wagoners had cleared out after sundown, leaving only the quiet murmur of the river in the gorge below and the rhythmic scrape of Tessa Dene’s trowel as she pointed the drafty joints of the outer kitchen pantry.
Noll Vey rested in his north foundation wall, watching the empty hall through the narrow squint-holes.
Above the oak desk in the small office, the white chalk pointer hung motionless in its groove. Over three years since the Reckoning, the rhythm of the house had settled into an unhurried routine: no armies camped in mud, no midnight warrants, and no frantic arithmetic against an auditor’s collar. Instead, there was only the honest tick of trade.
A plate of salt pork and boiled greens: two copper pence. A dry stall in the lower stables with sweet upland hay: four coppers. A seat at Hesta’s Saturday pantomime: three groats. Every coin was counted out under Prit’s dry gaze, entered into the daybook, and divided according to the work compact Tessa had nailed to the doorpost.
