The sound of iron boots climbing the outside ladder was too light, too deliberate, to belong to a judge.
Ren turned away from the railing. His heart seized in his throat as the heavy trapdoor at the southern end of the gangway creaked open. Through the gap rose a slender figure wrapped in a giant mantle of coarse grey wool, pinned at the throat with a plain wooden clasp.
“Mira,” Ren said, the single syllable catching on the dry roof of his mouth. “You were supposed to stay in the kiln cellar with the draught ox.”
Mira Vale stepped onto the iron grating. She didn’t stumble. Her left hand, small and pale, gathered the heavy folds of her wool skirt to keep them clear of the grease-covered bolts. Meanwhile, her right arm hung bare and brilliant in the violet haze of the chamber.
From the curve of her right jawline down through her collar bone, shoulder, and tapering fingers, her flesh had ceased to be meat and bone. It was smoky quartz, cut into hundreds of sharp, sharp-angled facets that captured the chamber’s conflicting light and broke it into needles of pale amber and violet. As she took a breath, the crystal ribs beneath her linen blouse rang. A low, pure chime humming at four hundred and forty cycles, clear and steady as a ship’s bell heard across calm water.
