Kezra froze with her hand buried in the gravel beneath the central larch floor beam.
The dead air of the stone trench was cold against her face, smelling of dry limestone dust and ancient winter silt. Outside in the room above, she could hear the quiet murmur of Fellis checking the mule’s hobbles and the occasional dry scrape of Paxa’s kettle against the hearthstone.
Slowly, carefully, Kezra worked her fingertips around the hard, metal object wedged into the mortar joint.
It wasn’t a flat flake of shale or an iron nail dropped by a carpenter. The object was thick, heavy, and cold, with a distinct sharp-angled outline that felt unnatural against the rough stone. It was wedged tightly into the quarter-inch gap between the bottom of the larch sleeper and the dark rock trench wall, packed with dried lime dust as if it had been deliberately pressed into the joint.
She drew Davren’s work knife from its sheath with her left hand. It slid the thin iron blade into the mortar above the metal. She worked the blade gently, chipping away a crust of dry grey lime until the object loosened with a faint, gritty scrape.
It dropped into her open palm with a dull, heavy clink that spoke of dense, cast metal.
