Lady Signe Lorr held the caribou-bone stylus between her gloved thumb and forefinger, her breath condensing in pale, rapid puffs against the cold ivory.
She turned the seven-inch shaft beneath the morning light, her thumb tracing the smooth curve of the antler grain until her nail found the narrow brass ferrule at the tip. Right where the metal collar met the bone, in a recessed margin no wider than a horsehair, was a tiny, cross-hatched notch, scarcely visible to the naked eye.
Her thumb went rigid against the notch.
“A jeweler’s file,” she murmured, her voice stripped of its crisp metropolitan edge, sounding like a woman speaking in her sleep. “Number four needle file with a diamond bevel. I bought it from a Dutch clockmaker on the river quays during my third term at the High College. I cut this notch on the night of the Winter Solstice because my fellow clerks kept borrowing my drafting tools from the scribes’ bench. I wanted a mark that only my own fingertips could detect in the dark.”
She looked up at Jon, her spectacles reflecting the dull gray clouds above the market square. “No one saw me cut this mark. My uncle was dead. My chamber door was bolted from the inside. I filled the cut with powdered lampblack mixed with lavender varnish so the black would never fade, even if the bone were scraped with a scraper.”
