Sella Rusk did not put down her oil-rag when Noll’s baritone rattled the tin saucer on the bench. She finished wiping the inner iron boss of her shield, tucked the greasy linen square into her belt pouch, and rested both forearms across the curved oak rim.
“Nobody said you shorted the weight of her silver, Vey,” Sella said. Her voice had the flat, steady carry of someone accustomed to speaking across wind-swept river fords without shouting. “She bit the coin on the first day. She knows it spends.”
“Then what is the crime?” Noll demanded from the western wall, letting his voice run up and down three separate mortar seams at once as though pacing the room. “Look around you, Sella! Four days ago, this hall was a flooded sheep-pen with elderberry roots growing through the vault and a dead goat in the chimney! Today there is a tight slate roof overhead, a dry culvert under the west wall, a stove that heats barley broth without burning a stick of timber, and a bag of thirty-year-old guard arrears going down the hill to widows who were cheated by their own king! How do you suppose I built all that? By reciting parish homilies to the field mice?”
