The wind howling down from the high shale ridges carried the smell of bruised hemlock, wet slate, and winter waiting behind the clouds.
In the Grand Hall, the silence that followed Sella Rusk’s departure back to the east gallery felt less like peace and more like the pause between a lightning strike and thunder.
Prit stood upon his three-legged stool beside the central hearth. The little bone-imp steward had his moth-eaten coat buttoned tightly to his throat, ivory hands clasped behind his back, and empty eye sockets fixed upon the fist-sized blue stone five feet up the western limestone wall.
“A subterranean staircase leading to an unrecorded court,” Prit said, his dry voice clicking with the measured tempo of a clock. “An undead watch-sergeant fleeing into the courtyard in terror. A ten-day tax execution notice posted on the gatepost by a Crown clerk who buys ink by the gallon. And you, sir, are sitting in your socket like an ostler who found an extra copper in the straw.”
“I am a man of property, Prit,” Noll answered through the mortar seam, using the mellow, reassuring baritone he once used to settle tavern crowds before a card trick. “Look around you. We have four dry walls, a fuel-less hearth that throws amber warmth without a shovel of coal, and a window that turns muck into clear glass. If a man cannot take pleasure in home improvement, why bother being a core at all?”
