The man standing on the threshold of the workshop looked like a sack of unbolted meal that had been dragged through a wet hedge.
Master Miller Thomas was fifty winters old, with shoulders broad as an ox-yoke and eyebrows white with permanent rye dust. He was wearing his heavy Sunday frieze coat, damp around the collar from the melting river mist, and clutching an oblong bundle wrapped in greasy brown oilcloth to his chest.
Behind him, across the cobblestones of the Three Wells, the morning sun was warming the brick chimneys. It sent thin spirals of blue woodsmoke into the crisp winter air.
“Morning, young Ren,” the miller said, his voice deep, gravelly, and hesitant as he shifted his weight from boot to boot. “I saw the shingle swinging above the door. I... I didn’t know if you were open for folk yet. After everything that happened up on the mountain.”
“The door is open, Master Thomas,” Ren said, stepping aside and pulling the latch wide. “Come inside. It’s warmer by the bench.”
The miller stepped into the workshop, ducking his head instinctively beneath the low oak ceiling beams. He sniffed the air—cured sheepskin, wheat paste, and dry pine—and let out a long, shuddering sigh of relief.
