The midnight rain fell in a dense, blinding curtain across the slate roofs of Harth, washing down the granite gutter-stones with the roar of an unbridled mountain creek. The alleys were choked with gray foam and rotting autumn chaff, and the river spray blew all the way to the market square, smelling of wet reeds and dead marsh grass.
Down in the lower market lane, torches flickered through the downpour as Lady Signe Lorr’s assize escort rattled past the corner of the brewhouse. The magistrate’s clear, commanding voice carried above the thunder of the gutters, demanding that Captain Dain produce the muster roll for the south gate barricades and summon Sir Cael’s watch subaltern to inspect the sagging timber revetments. The diversion worked with surgical precision: within five minutes, the four oath guards posted at the high street corner had gathered their shields and marched toward the south palisade, their iron-shod boots splashing through the brown ruts, leaving the alley behind the old brewery dark and deserted.
Alden Bram pushed the rear cooperage gate inward, its iron hinges silenced with a thick smear of mutton tallow he had brought in a wooden gallipot.
“Keep close to the wall, Jon,” Bram whispered, ducking beneath a low overhang where wet malt sacks hung from drying poles like drowned cattle. “The ground drops four feet into the mash cellar. Don’t slip on the lees. If you break an ankle in the dark, we’ll have to drag you through the mud by your collar.”
