Mistress Bessa Karr did not hurry to the desk even when the taproom door closed behind the last weaver. She waited until Jon had snuffed two of the four whale-oil lamps to save fat, leaving the room lit by the red birch coals on the hearth and the single brass lamp above Elin’s ledger, and she kept her seat through the dark watches of the night while she and Elin audited every stave, hoop, and brine-pickled barrel in the River Lantern’s lower vaults.
Only when the sky outside the east scullery lattice turned the color of wet pewter before the sixth bell of Day 2 did Bessa Karr lay her closed warehouse tally-book down beside the town compact.
At that exact moment, boots clicked on the wet cobbles of South Lane outside, and the front taproom door swung inward without a knock.
Notary Corve Penner stepped across the brass threshold plate carrying his green pigskin folio under one arm and a portable brass assize balance-case in his gloved hand. One pace behind him walked Sir Cael Ardent in his blued steel shoulder-guards and high gold gorget, accompanied by two broad-shouldered royal armsmen wearing the white-rose tabard over dark mail.
Cael did not look like a man who had slept well in his counting-house quarters. In the grey dawn light slanting through the open door, the skin beneath his jaw looked drawn and tallow-pale, and a fresh dark stain the size of a thumbprint showed through the white linen wrapping above…
