The sun rose over Canton Vane like a blister of white-hot brass. By eight in the morning, the heat was already streaming from the limestone walls of the cottages. That turned the narrow village square into a choking dust-trap.
Tomas Reed sat on an overturned grain barrel beneath the dry roof edges of the village forge shop, his boots resting in the pale gray dirt. His pack frame stood beside him, strapped and ready, but his ledger case lay open across his lap. His left forearm, bound tightly in its oiled calfskin brace, rested flat on the ash lid of the satchel. Beside him, Nessa Vale was cleaning the brass lenses of her side with a scrap of dry silk, her sharp eyes flicking constantly toward the northern road where the dust of approaching hooves hung in the still air.
Sile Rook stood ten paces away, directly in the center of the village square. There, the dry stone trough of the communal fountain sat filled with dead leaves and broken pottery. The scarred watchman had not sought the shade. He stood in the direct glare of the sun, his heavy tall oak body-shield planted upright in the dirt before him, its iron-heavy base buried two inches into the hard clay. Across the top rim of the shield rested his iron-wood hooked pruning blade, its curved, heavy cleaving blade oiled and gleaming in the morning light.
