The withdrawal of Harlan Pike and Vannic Dorr did not thin the crowd around the market cross; it tightened it the way driving out two loose wedges tightens the framing of an oak barn.
Master Baker Dunstan Harl stepped up to the front of the counting-desk, his broad linen apron still warm from the morning’s first batch of rye loaves and his sleeves rolled above his thick, flour-whitened elbows. Behind him stood his wife Marta, holding four-year-old Brin on her hip while nine-year-old Pip and six-year-old Lark clung to the hem of her wool skirt, watching the red wax seals dangle from the bottom of the Bound Common Charter.
Dunstan looked down the cobbles toward West Lane where Vannic Dorr’s velvet coat had just vanished around the corner of the cooperage, then slapped his broad palm flat against the oak counting-desk beside Corve Penner’s inkwell.
“Let the wine-peddler hug his brandy barrels in the dark,” Dunstan said, his voice rumbling across the square like a millstone settling into its bed. “Forty-eight roofs hold tighter than fifty when the rot is pared out. Put my mark down twice in the confirmation margin, Master Penner—once for the South Lane Bakehouse and once for my children’s beds.”
