The smell of spilled lye-water mixed with the sharp, coppery tang of Elin’s blood and the sour sweat pouring from the boy on the floor. In the narrow stairwell corridor, the draft from the river rattled the leaded glass in the transom, shaking the gray mist against the outside of the pane with the dry chatter of cold teeth.
Jon kept his palms pressed flat against the outer seams of his wool trousers.
Every muscle along his spine pulled toward the corner of the washstand where the heavy hearth poker waited. In the fourth life, he had taken an iron bar to a drunken mercenary who had broken into the buttery, shattering the man’s collarbone with a single downward stroke that had come from instinct and panic. In the sixth life, when the south gate had collapsed, he had disarmed an Ash vanguard skirmisher with an upward hook of his left forearm, catching the wrist before the short-sword could clear the scabbard. That kind of muscle memory never truly faded; it remained coiled in the sinews of his shoulders like an unspent spring.
He did not move his feet. His heels stayed planted in the puddle of gray water, his weight balanced square on both boots, his shoulders slightly rounded.
