The evening drizzle had turned into a cold, needlesome mist by the time Jon Hale, Lady Signe Lorr, and Alden Bram slipped through the River Lantern’s back scullery door and pressed themselves into the deep shadow beneath the cedar eaves of the livery barn.
Across the wet cobbles of the courtyard, the horn casements of the taproom glowed warm and amber, throwing long barred rectangles of light across the puddles by the well-curb. Inside that lighted room, Elin was setting a dish of warm bread pudding before Warden Brecht while Sister Oda, Marris Gault, Garrick Holt, Bessa Karr, and Joran Finch held the perimeter benches. Up on the second floor of the inn, behind the shuttered parlor window, eight-year-old Nell and the Harl children were safely behind an oak door barred from the inside, with two of Captain Dain’s trusted municipal watchmen standing guard on the landing.
Here in the shadowed passage between the stone water-trough and the tack-room wall, the night smelled of wet horsehair, coal-smoke drifting from the south wall braziers, and freshly turned river-sand.
A soft, double click—the sound of two iron horseshoe nails tapped together inside a closed palm—came from the dark recess behind the hay-chute ladder.
