The last bronze vibration of the sixth bell on the ninth day of Flood Month was still humming inside the River Lantern’s oak joists as Jon Hale braced his knee against the damp flagstones beside the burlap flour sacks.
In the seconds since the sixth stroke had dropped through the ceiling like an iron plumb weight, the roaring limestone dust of the collapsed lower aqueduct, the shriek of the subterranean engine beneath the Old Hill, and the crimson spray of Sir Cael Ardent’s slit throat had vanished into mold-scented cellar gloom. Cold sweat soaked the wool of Jon’s undershirt. His breastbone still ached with the phantom compression of falling granite voussoirs that had not yet fallen, and his teeth chattered against the sour copper taste of rollback shock coating his tongue.
On the bottom stair tread, Button—eight-year-old Nell’s lame river rook—gave a parting click of its pinned wing-joint and hopped up the stone steps, slipping through the narrow cat-notch beneath the kitchen door toward the warm scent of porridge overhead. Above the fourteen inches of cured cellar beams and scrubbed pine planking, the morning life of the inn moved through its exact ninth-day cadence. Elin’s small broth pot had just slipped on the iron trivet as the sixth bell died, Nell’s bare feet were pattering across the hearth to fetch the dry ash-pan rag, and in three minutes more Elin would turn to the warped upper board of the pine hutch where the heirloom blue-glazed oatmeal bowl sat waiting to…
