The morning sun warmed the grey flagstones of the upper courtyard until the dew rose in faint, sweet-smelling wisps of steam among the border thyme.
Noll Vey walked across the open yard, his plain stone feet coming down upon the stones with a heavy, hollow clack-clack-clack that had become as familiar to the inhabitants of the fort as the kitchen chimney-bell. His body was not the supple, handsome illusion he had once woven from forty thousand stolen lie points—there were no velvet skirts swishing against his thighs, no lace cuffs fluttering at his wrists, and no theatrical chin tilted toward an imaginary gallery. His frame was carved from plain mountain limestone, square-shouldered, thick-waisted, and scarred along the ribs where Ossa Flint’s chisel had smoothed the joint-channels. His nose was slightly crooked where a slip of Tessa’s mallet had taken off a corner during the autumn fitting, and his grey stone fingers were broad, blunt, and thick as carpenter’s pegs.
Yet every joint moved true. When he turned his wrist, the internal friction was clean and dry, lubricated by two full years of accumulated Agreement Warmth that sat in his central core like hot sand in a clay jar.
Prit was waiting for him by the south garden wall, sitting on an upturned nail keg with a clean quire of paper pinned to his drawing board.
