The heavy cedar bar dropped into its iron brackets with a dull, satisfying clunk.
Sera Thorne drove the secondary locking pin through the timber frame, resting her back against the sealed barracks door. Outside, the distant roar of three hundred miners celebrating in the square sounded like a muffled hum through two feet of solid stone.
“The perimeter is secure,” Sera reported, glancing out the slit window. “Justin took the proctor wagon toward the upper administration offices. Varga is surrounded by his officers, screaming at Gorm about the vault tallies.”
“Good,” Kaelen said, walking toward the rear storeroom. “Noise is bad for concentration. Especially when that noise belongs to an angry man who owes me twenty-eight hundred stones.”
Barnaby Holt set the three-legged bronze cauldron down upon the hearth stones, his one arm trembling from adrenaline. Linnea leaned against the cedar worktable, her face still pale from the sheer shock of the morning’s contest.
“Kaelen,” Barnaby wheezed, wiping sweat from his eyebrows with his sleeve. “You just humiliated the syndicate’s chief alchemist in front of the entire canyon. Every spy in the territory will be watching this building.”
“Let them watch the roof,” Kaelen replied mildly. “We are working indoors.”
