The common room of the River Lantern was empty of patrons, but it was not quiet.
Through the heavy oak floorboards came the dull, rhythmic thud of Elin’s grain pestle in the cellar below, cracking dried maize to stretch the evening porridge. In the corner near the cold stone fireplace, Lady Signe Lorr sat at the corner table, her sleeves pinned back with bone brooches, writing steadily into the municipal ledger with an unclipped raven quill. Each stroke of the nib was sharp, rhythmic, the mechanical accounting of human lives rendered into iron gall ink.
Sir Cael Ardent stood in the center of the room, still wearing his field armor. He had not taken off his gauntlets. He stood with his boots planted on the worn pine planks, his pewter-grey cuirass reflecting the pale, watery sunlight that fell through the leaded diamond panes of the south window.
Jon entered from the scullery, carrying a wooden tray with a clean earthenware pitcher of spring water and three horn mugs.
“Drink,” Jon said, setting the tray on the trestle table between them. “You rode three leagues through the mist without water. Your lips are cracked with salt.”
Cael did not look at the pitcher. He looked at Jon’s face—at the dark hollows under Jon’s cheekbones, at the mud dried into the wool of his collar, and at his hands, where the pale scar rings circled his knuckles like bands of bone.
