The stone of the landing was cold, but the cold did not reach his marrow.
Jon lay on his back across the third step below the cellar hatch, his shoulders wedged against the riser while water and spilled lees dripped from the hem of his woolen coat. Every pulse of blood through his collarbone carried a distinct, sickening surge of heat downward into his right shoulder, branching through the elbow and terminating in the meat of his fingers like needles dipped in lye.
“Keep his shoulders flat,” Signe said. Her boots slipped once on the wet limestone, the iron ferrule of her judicial cane clinking against the foundation wall. “Do not let him curl toward the injury. If the wet cloth sticks to the raw fascia before we cut the sleeve away, we will tear the skin to the tendon.”
Jon tried to draw air through his teeth. The cellar air was thick with the stench of scorched tallow, vinegar, and boiled wool. Ten feet below them in the drowned dark of the vat room, the surface of the pool hissed faintly where hot stone met cold runoff.
Across the narrow brick passageway, Sir Cael Ardent slumped against the lime-washed pier. The knight had not pulled his torn tunic together. The heavy round medallion of the crown seal rested flat against his collarbone, dark and sullen now, its gold rim edged with a greasy black crust where hair and chest skin had carbonized beneath the sudden return of the circuit…
