The square of bleached bandage linen weighed less than a copper half-farthing on Jon’s palm, yet when he unfolded the four neat corners under the tallow lamp, his knees went weaker than they had under the forty-pound aqueduct pin.
Resting in the center of the white cloth was a single human milk tooth—a lower left lateral incisor, no bigger than a kernel of sweetriver corn. Its tiny enamel crown was notched with two faint developmental ridges along the biting edge where eight-year-old Nell had a habit of chewing on the wooden handle of her slate pencil while practicing her cipher sums. Down at the base, the resorbed root was hollowed into a delicate, crescent-shaped cup, stained with one microscopic speck of dried rust-brown blood that had never been washed away.
As the cool enamel touched the calloused pad of Jon’s thumb, the ivory-white somatic band encircling his left ring finger answered with a steady, living pulse.
Unlike the cold metallic tug of the bronze gate fitting or the greasy, feverish prickle of Cael’s blood vial, the ninth ring felt warm—the exact warmth of a child’s cheek pressed against a wool waistcoat when she fell asleep at the taproom hearth after supper.
