Before Lady Signe Lorr stepped to the side table to take Sir Cael Ardent’s signature, she walked to the narrow casement window at the back of the chamber to draw the heavy inner oak shutter tight against the afternoon sun.
Through the two-inch gap between the mullions, looking out into the cobbled court behind the well-house where the shareholder families were unloading their ration sacks, Signe paused for two heartbeats with her fingers on the iron drop-bar.
Out by the well-curb stood fifty-one-year-old Master Fishmonger Harlan Pike in his tarred canvas apron, his broad, weather-beaten face creased in awkward, fierce concentration as he helped his twenty-year-old daughter Mira lift a heavy wicker creel of salted river-pike onto the stone coping. As the basket settled, Harlan reached out with his huge, gaff-scarred hand and tucked a loose strand of dark hair behind Mira’s oiled wool cap—a clumsy father’s gesture that made the girl stop with her brass net-shuttle in her hand and lean her forehead briefly against his tarred shoulder before both of them turned back to their barrels.
Lady Signe Lorr pulled the oak shutter closed and dropped the iron bar into its bracket, plunging that corner of the room into cool shadow.
