The pine trestle table groaned as Jon Hale set the stone-and-pewter bowl down six inches from Sir Cael Ardent’s blistered ribs. Beneath the floorboards, the low vibration of the uncooled Furnace core sent tiny ripples across the dry salt crystal clinging to the pewter rim, threatening to walk the vessel toward the edge of the plank. Without a word, Jon reached into the wooden bucket at his knee, scooped out three double handfuls of coarse gray marsh salt from Bessa Karr’s curing sheds, and packed a dense, damp ring around the base of the bowl until the stone sat dead level and immovable against the wood.
“More light on the left side, Jon,” Elin said, her linen kerchief tied tight over her hair as she leaned across the pallet with her heavy iron nursing shears. “Hold the lamp high enough that the shadow of the bowl does not fall across his breastbone. The linen of his undertunic has melted into the char along the third rib.”
Jon lifted the brass oil lamp with his left hand, the four pale rings on his thumb, index, middle, and ring fingers—along with the verdigris-tinted scar of the bronze gate fitting on his pinky—catching the yellow flame. Across the narrow width of the bed, Sister Oda knelt on the bare oak boards, her gaunt knees pressing into the dust as she drew a thick finger-length of cold-iron chalk along the base of the four pine trestle legs. With each firm, clinical stroke, she murmured…
