The chamomile tea burned a clean track down Jon’s throat, chasing the last of the cellar damp from his chest while Elin bolted the outer courtyard door against early grain carters.
When she returned to the oak kneading table, Jon unrolled his canvas tally wrap and laid out the working proofs of his shelf in a straight, forensic row across the scrubbed pine boards. He did not dump them in a heap; he placed each relic two finger-widths apart so Elin could inspect the material chain of custody the way she had once inspected field surgical kits before an engagement.
On the left sat the tarnished fiddle-pattern silver spoon (#1), followed by the scorched linen prayer strip from St. Jude (#3), the horn-hilted border knife in its split scabbard (#5), the blood-crusted Reset 3 troop orders (#6), the smoke-scented leather ledger (#7), the wax-stopped green glass vial of Cael’s blood (#8), and the folded linen square holding Nell’s shed tooth (#9). Beside his right elbow rested the stamped brass key to Room 4 (#4).
“Every one of these survived because someone left it in the house’s care before the clock broke,” Jon said, resting his ten-ringed hands flat on the edge of the table. “In the seventh life, I told you about the returns, and we spent four days scrambling to patch Cael’s defenses from behind his back—salting the marsh ford, stacking bandages in the wash house, warning Bram about the mill abutment. We treated Cael like a natural storm…
