The four soot prints on the flyleaf dried to a matte, charcoal black beneath the warmth of the horn lanterns. The vellum smelled of cold walnut oil and ancient sheepskin, and the cellar vault seemed to hold its breath as Jon Hale laid his open right palm over the signatures.
“I speak this before the stones,” Jon said, his voice dropping into the quiet, resonant register that belonged to the cellar bedrock. “I am Jon Hale, Keeper of the River Lantern. I swear by the threshold, by the hearth, and by the unkept debt of every soul that has slept beneath this roof. I bind my memory to these four witnesses. No measure shall be taken in secret; no life shall be spent without an open tally; no retreat shall be sounded while our neighbors stand upon the wall.”
The air in the vault turned instantly frigid.
It was not the creeping chill of a draft from the river shallows. It was the sudden, total subtraction of heat that accompanied an imperial attunement, sharp as ice water poured down a split collar. The moisture on the damp flagstones frosted into delicate, white fern-patterns, and the tallow in the lantern pans seized into solid tallow discs.
