Before Jon Hale let anyone unbar the south casement or run down the lane toward the bathhouse, he turned back to the taproom trestle table where Lady Signe Lorr, Sister Oda, and Corve Penner stood over the completed leaves of the Town Ledger.
He knew the rhythm of the Hearth Nail too well to leave an unbound stack of parchment sheets lying loose on an oak board while an alarm was sounding in the dark. In Life Ten, ninety seconds of smoke pouring through the kitchen floorboards had been enough to break the Second Treatment and send a day sliding toward ruin; in Life Eleven, Brecht’s needle had taken Cael between one breath and the next. If Morvath was moving in the lower ward tonight, the town’s census had to be sealed into a single lawful body before Jon took a single step outside the inn’s four cornerstones.
“Bind the quires and close the attestation first,” Jon said, dropping the iron shutter-bar across the south window and stepping back to the head of the trestle. “Two minutes with the awl and the cord, Corve. If this book is left in loose signatures, the house boundary will only read it as scattered paper.”
