The iron grille swung back into its granite collar with a dull, hollow thud that echoed down the dark passage like a muffled drumbeat.
Alden Bram wedged two triangular chocks of cured heart-oak beneath the rusted hinge-pins, driving them home with three sharp, heavy strokes of his wooden mallet. He checked the seam with his thumb, grunting as the splintered iron settled into the mortar rebate.
“That will hold against a casual inspection,” Bram muttered, wiping the black rust-dust from his calloused palms onto his leather apron. “If Ors sends a patrol with sledgehammers, it won’t buy twenty minutes. A builder knows when stone has given up its temper, Jon. The lime in these arches is dead. One solid concussive pulse from that core, and the whole roof drops into the mash tuns.”
“Then we make sure the pulse never vents,” Jon answered quietly, his eyes lingering on the dark outflow sleeve where Iven had vanished into the mountain mist.
“You speak as though mercy were an iron brace, innkeeper,” Bram said, picking up his pry-bar and leaning his heavy frame against the granite jamb. “In sixty years of masonry, I’ve seen three sieges and two peasant uprisings. I’ve seen good men spare enemy carters out of Christian charity, only to have those same carters lead cavalry companies through the orchard ditches at midnight. Mercy in wartime doesn’t buy peace, Jon. It usually buys only a quicker grave and an unhallowed burial.”
