Jon held his left hand two inches from the tallow flame and watched the tenth ring finish settling into his flesh.
Unlike an ordinary burn from a bakehouse oven or a slip of a paring knife across a pork rind, a somatic trust mark left no blister and raised no proud seam. The skin around the base of his left pinky simply bleached to the dense, mineral pallor of river chalk, save for a faint green-gray undertone along its upper margin that matched the verdigris patina on the bronze gate fitting at his feet. Every pore and fine knuckle crease within the quarter-inch band had smoothed away, as if an invisible cooper had driven a cold iron hoop around the bone to keep the joint from splitting under pressure.
He flexed his left hand open and shut. A dull, taut pulling sensation answered along the outer tendon of his palm, running from the pinky root down to the ulnar knob of his wrist.
“Ten guests kept,” Jon said softly to the empty vault, his breath misting in the cellar chill, “and no room left on the bone.”
He laid both hands palm-down on the head of the third salt-pork barrel and counted his digits from right to left like a grain factor tallying sacks before a winter lockup. Right thumb: the peacetime traveler’s silver spoon, left behind as a security pledge before the war ever reached the valley. Right index: the spool of copper-iron mending wire Button had pilfered from…
