The third dawn of the seventh life brought no warmth to the cellar flagstones.
Jon Hale stood on the fifth step from the bottom, carrying a rush taper in a saucer of sheep grease. Behind him, Sister Oda descended with her woolen skirts gathered in one lean hand, her brass keys chiming against the iron pin at her hip. Six hours after the cracked bell of Saint Jude had clattered out the midnight watch across the river fog, she had crossed the market square at first gray light, bringing her bone probe and horn lens to inspect the foundation stones they had spoken of in the dark. The air smelled of elderberry mash, dry turnip rinds, and the alkaline bitterness that seeped through the river-facing mortar whenever the autumn current crested against the wharf piles.
“Mind the third tread,” Jon said under his breath. “The tread-board cracked during the spring freshet four years back. It will rock under a firm heel.”
Oda stepped over the warped ash timber without looking down. Her habit rustled against the dry cedar uprights of the stairwell. “My balance is intact, master innkeeper. Show me what your memory claims the masonry has forgotten.”
Jon reached the dirt-and-grit floor. He led the canoness past the row of thirty-gallon ale tuns resting upon their chocks. The iron hoops on the middle barrel showed red bloom where cellar mist condensed each midnight, exactly five inches above the lower stave. He had scrubbed that rust away in four different…
