The attic room above Master Barnaby Thorne’s print shop smelled of boiling animal glue, dry rag thick parchment, and the bitter, vinegar tang of dark oak-ink. Rain tapped against the sloping glass skylight like handfuls of dry peas thrown against a windowpane, leaking a steady, thin drip into an earthen basin set between two stacks of legal commentaries bound in cracked calfskin.
Hester Quill sat at a narrow pine frame stand table, her glasses perched on the bridge of her thin nose by a thread of knotted catgut. Her hair, the color of dry river slate, was pulled back into an uncompromising bun pinned with an ivory needle-point arrow carved from an old drafting rule. She didn’t look up when Tomas entered and set his pack frame against the book-press. She merely dipped a split steel nib into a horn inkwell. Then she made a marginal notation in a ledger bound in crumbling pigskin.
“Clause Seven is where they intend to sever the cord,” Hester said without preamble, her voice as dry as parchment drying in an oven. “The court guard gave you the abbreviated notice. I have the full engrossed draft from the parliamentary scriveners. Lucian Vane spent three months polishing this knife.”
