The instant Warden Brecht spoke the words all six of your straw ticks in the livery loft while his right thumb rested upon the fiddle-shaped handle of Object #1, the pale silver ring around the base of Jon Hale’s right thumb turned cold as river ice.
Behind the scrubbed oak counter of the bar, Jon did not flinch or change the set of his shoulders, yet through the somatic bond connecting the silver spoon on the supper table to the four granite cornerstones of the house, Honest Measure struck a sharp, unmistakable discord—like a counterfeit lead groat dropped onto a marble counting-stone.
Jon knew the exact boundary of his trade skill. Honest Measure was not a priesthood inquisition charm that could read a man’s secret thoughts or judge whether a philosophical opinion was wicked or noble. What it governed—with absolute, unappealable precision inside the Four-Cornerstone Boundary—was commercial weight, paid tally, and physical occupancy under a house contract. When a guest paid fourteen copper pence across the bar for one supper, six stabled horses, and six loft beds, and then stated with his hand on the house silver that six men were occupying those six beds, the building itself audited the weight upon the rafters.
