Jon Hale walked through the cellar doorway and returned three minutes later carrying two objects: a heavy earthenware jar sealed with cracked tallow and a rolled sheepskin surveyor’s map tied with frayed hemp twine.
He set the jar down upon the corner of Lady Signe’s deal table with a solid thud. The jar was gray, unglazed, and encrusted with the salt blooms of thirty damp springs beneath the tavern floor. Across its belly, written in his grandfather’s sprawling carpenter’s scrawl, were the faded charcoal characters: HARTH NORTH WALL — ACID PRESS — AUTUMN 382.
“Unroll the parchment, My Lady,” Jon said, wiping dust from his apron.
Signe took her bone paper-knife and sliced the hemp cord. With smooth, practiced motions, she flattened the sheepskin map across the green baize of her portable desk, weighting the four curled corners with her brass ruler, two inkpots, and a lead cube from her traveling case.
“Survey of the North Quarter,” Signe announced, her voice ringing clear and authoritative in the small parlor. “Conducted by Royal Surveyor Tomas Vance in the twelfth year of the late Emperor. Certified under the provincial seal of the River Marches.”
Across the hoop-iron circle, Sir Cael Ardent remained pinned to his rush chair, his chest heaving under the amber glare of the four hovering gold bars. The hairline fracture of violet light beneath the topmost leaf had widened slightly, emitting a faint, whistling hiss like steam escaping from a boiled kettle.
