The whistle rising from the cellar bulkhead was not the high, thin shriek of a kitchen tea-kettle; it was a deep, thrumming organ-pipe vibration that made the pewter tankards on the taproom shelves chatter against their oak pegs and sent fine white mortar dust sifting down from the ceiling joists.
Jon Hale lifted the frost-rimed stone bowl from the pine trestle, tucking the heavy vessel securely into the crook of his left elbow where the cracked, gray ring of the Returner Seal and the #4 Brass Key lay wedged together in the damp marsh salt. With his right hand he swept Object #10—the heavy, verdigris-stained Bronze Gate Fitting he had claimed from the sluice breach at the end of the seventh return—off the washstand and slipped its square bronze shank through his belt loop beside the #5 Border Knife.
“Stay with Cael and keep the parlor door wedged open so you can hear the watchmen,” Jon told Elin, pausing for half a heartbeat at the threshold to touch his knuckles to her cheek. “If Bram gives the word to vent the house, do not wait for me—carry Cael out through the courtyard into the bakehouse and take Nell and Button across the street to the weaver’s porch.”
