The wool of Sister Oda’s habit had absorbed three pints of muddy brewery water before her knees cleared the broken iron grille, but she did not pause to wring her hem. In her sixty-two winters, twenty of them spent cataloguing water-damaged parchment in the unheated scriptorium of St. Jude, she had learned that damp wool dried quickly enough, but an unrecorded truth rotted forever if left in the dark.
She adjusted the horn spectacles upon the bridge of her nose, tucking a stray wisp of gray hair beneath her linen wimple.
Ahead of her in the dry conduit, Jon Hale’s broad back moved with steady, unhurried rhythm. The innkeeper did not move like a scholar entering an ancient archive; he moved like a cellarman rolling a heavy tun down a skid, testing each flagstone with the heel of his boot before trusting it with his weight. Beside him, Alden Bram limped heavily, his iron pry-bar clinking against the granite walls with every third step, his breath rasping like a wood rasp across green ash.
The air here was completely dry, warm as a bakery loft in July, and thick with the smell of parched slate, heated brass, and ancient engine grease. It was an unnatural warmth that did not come from burning wood or peat, but from the immense friction of subterranean machinery working far below the riverbed.
