The sixth bell of Flood Month had barely finished its toll across the river quarter when the cold in Jon Hale’s right arm struck him like a chisel of river ice.
It arrived as a sharp, mineral ache, pressing through the skin below his elbow where the new white band had formed in the void. He stood upon the third wooden riser of the cellar stairs, his boot soles frozen against the grain of the seasoned pine, his left hand gripping the glazed rim of the coarse brown salt crock he had promised to carry into the kitchen. Through the open floor-hatch above his head, the sound of Elin’s shattered mixing bowl still seemed to echo off the kitchen hearthstones—a wet, sharp crash followed by her breathless curse at the grease on the crockery, and then the low, inquisitive croak of Button hopping across the cedar rafters to greet the gray dawn.
Jon did not move. He kept his head tilted toward the timbers of the ceiling, his breathing shallow, his ribs counting the slow return of warmth to his extremities.
Encircling his lower right forearm, three inches above the wrist joint, the brand-new band of bleached white scar tissue burned with an iron-cold hum that reached into his marrow whenever his pulse peaked. It was the eleventh trust of the house, sealed during the final freezing seconds of Life Eight when Sir Cael Ardent had driven his trench dagger into his heart at St. Jude’s bridge shrine. On his…
