On the eighth evening of Flood Month—the eve of the first anniversary of the venting of the subterranean shaft—the late-spring twilight settled warm and lilac-tinted over the cobbled courtyard of the River Lantern.
Inside the taproom, behind the long scrubbed oak counter where the pewter tankards gleamed in a neat row, the wooden common shelf held the quiet, retired witnesses of the twelve loops. Centered beneath the brass plaque of the Harth Civic Trust sat #13 Tobin’s Lead Tube, its dented grey metal polished clean of Chancellery wax and filled with a fragrant bundle of dried purple lavender from Widow Clara Moss’s garden, resting alongside #1 Silver Spoon, #3 Burned Prayer Strip, #4 Brass Key & Bill, #5 Border Knife, #8 Blood Vial, #10 Bronze Gate Fitting, #11 Bone Stylus, #12 Bram’s Brace, #15 Bound Town Ledger, and Cael’s Greatsword (whose notched steel blade Master Smith Garrick Holt had blunted and pinned horizontally to the oak wall-studs above the shelf so it could never cut flesh again).
Outside in the courtyard, the wide double gates to the street stood hooked back, and former royal courier Tobin was expertly backing his four bay horses and the bright kingfisher-blue wagon of the Harth & Northern Riding Independent Post up to the three flat stone steps of the inn’s side porch.
