An iron gong banged twice outside the mouth of Stone-Willow Lane, followed by the raucous clamor of fifty screaming gamblers.
“Ten to one against the third son of Vance,” a bookmaker barked through a brass speaking horn. “Ten to one that Branch Master Orson scorches his furnace in five minutes.”
A chorus of drunken cheers and clattering dice cups rattled the paper lattice windows of the residential street.
Inside the quiet courtyard, Kaelen lay suspended in his hemp hammock, a light wool blanket pulled up to his chest.
Near the garden steps, Mina sat cross-legged on a pine bench, tossing five polished river pebbles across a smooth cedar board. Every time the brass gong clanged from the street, her hand trembled, and her pebble skittered off the wood into the dirt.
Mina puffed her cheeks in frustration, glaring toward the lane.
“Third Brother,” Mina grumbled, picking up her dropped stone. “Those gamblers have ruined three of my five-stone rounds. Can I please freeze their shoes to the cobblestones?”
“No freezing shoes,” Kaelen answered mildly from the hammock. “Frost on cobblestones makes old men slip. If an elder breaks a hip outside our wall, they will try to sue us for medical silver.”
