Keir stood just inside the copper vault, enjoying the flow of cool morning air and the way the clear dawn light poured through the casement she’d opened. This narrow, claustrophobic hollow within the tower’s thick wall was infinitely more bearable when freshened by breeze and sun. Why had she always followed Gael’s lead so precisely in every detail before? He wouldn’t have minded if she’d opened the casement during the checking out of the metals. Not in summer. But because he’d always left the casement shut, so had she.

She double-checked the stacks of copper ingots resting on the ledge by the door. There were the nine for the blade smithy, shiny in the flood of light. And there, the twenty-seven requisitioned by the privy smithy—three stacks of nine—including the ingot retrieved by Gael last night.

She thought again of the note he’d left for her under the three recovered ingots—one copper and two bronze.

Keir, Some of our missing metals have come home. I have not tallied their return yet. As you’ll see from the tally sheets, I have marked the disbursal of one ingot of tin for a special project. Gael.

She’d been up early—determined to fulfill her duties perfectly—and had time to rule and label the sheets for the evening checking in. She’d tallied the two bronze and the one copper ingot in, along with a written comment on the irregularity, wondering all the while how Gael had found them. She hoped he would tell her. She wanted to know.

No, she needed to know.

A footstep in the hall heralded the arrival of the blade scullion, a young troll with ruddy hair and a very upturned nose. Keir quelled an involuntary shudder at the strong evidence of his troll-disease. He grinned at her. “While the lynx lounges, the hare plays,” he teased.

Keir sniffed. “You wish,” she said, lifting an eyebrow. “The secretarius is more forbearing than I, and even he is not tolerant of much regarding his metals.”

The scullion shrugged, and slipped the strap of his carry sack off his shoulder to open it. Keir hefted the nine ingots going to his smithy from their ledge—nine pounds weren’t precisely heavy, but neither were they a feather weight—and lowered them into the embrace of the soft suede. She marked the tallies on the waiting tally sheet and paused a moment to see if the privy scullion would appear.

“You always going to issue the ingots now?” asked the blade scullion.

“No,” she answered shortly. It wasn’t really his business. “Perhaps a deichtain or two.”

“Why doesn’t the secretarius give it to you permanent? I heard he was moving up to the posh suite next to the regenen’s and would leave all his work to you.”

Now it was definitely time to snub the boy. “Then you heard wrong.”

“If he did, you could get a boy to work under you. You could ask for me! And when Gael retired, you could be secretarius, and I could get a boy who did what I said.”

That wasn’t worth answering. “It doesn’t work that way in Belzetarn,” she said.

“I’d ruther be the tally master than the bladesmith,” explained the boy.

No doubt, but he would become neither. And the privy scullion was late again. Keir hustled the blade scullion out and padlocked the vault door behind her. The corridor was very dark with the sunlight from the copper vault blocked, only a few glimmers of daylight from the stairwells at each end filtering through.

After she unlocked the tin vault and swung the door open, the latch clanging against the stone wall, light flooded into the corridor again. Just inside on the ledge, the tin ingots and her tally sheet awaited, readied by her earlier when she’d opened the vault’s casement. She gave the blade scullion his one ingot of tin, tallied it, and relocked the vault. No point in delaying for that late privy scullion.

The armor scullion arrived as she opened the bronze vault. She handed him his four bronze ingots, and he departed as swiftly as he’d come.

Keir wished the blade scullion would go, but he needed to collect a trio of nicked swords resting in the safe repository. That was next, and then she could get rid of him.

“Wouldn’t you like to be regenen one day?” the boy asked. “Tell everybody what to do!”

“No, I wouldn’t,” she answered coolly. “And you shouldn’t say things like that. It will get you in trouble sooner or later. More likely sooner.”

“Why?” he said.

A whole mob of scullions erupted from the Regenen Stair, jostling one another and kidding. Keir winced. Groups of trolls still bothered her, but maybe the blade scullion would shut his mouth now.

Keir opened the safe repository, settling into the rhythm of her work. Eight swords went to the two scullions of the grinding smithy and were tallied. She handed ten swords to the scullions of the annealing smithy. And tallied them. The hilt smithy received its swords, the armorers’ lodge received their scales and wire, the fletchers’ lodge accepted forty-nine arrowheads, and the spearmakers took their thirty-four spearheads.

The blade scullion stacked the three notched blades carelessly atop his ingots in the carry sack and left with the mob.

And still the privy scullion remained absent.

Keir locked the safe repository and entered the Regenen Stair in the wake of the departing scullions. They were headed all the way down to the smithies, but she turned off at the next level, encountering the scullions from the copper and tin smelteries as she did so. They were older than the boys in the other smithies, nearly as capable as their opteons, and serious about getting the partially refined metals from the mines to the peak of perfection required for Belzetarn’s forges.

Keir bypassed the doors to the vestries for the armor and weapons reserved for the legions’ elite.

The pebble vault lay behind the third door. She’d already weighed the irregular clumps of tin allotted to the tin smeltery and recorded the nine pounds and three ounces on her tally sheet. As she tilted the scoop into the smeltery scullion’s carry sack, the scullion—a dark fellow with a downcurving nose like Gael’s—muttered, “You’re overseeing the privy smithy this morning?”

Keir frowned. Not at all surprising that he knew of the arrangement; the scullions talked to one another. But why would a tin scullion concern himself with the privy smithy? What was his name? Ravin? Yes, Ravin.

“I will descend with the privy scullion after I issue his ingots,” she said.

Ravin sniffed. “The boys grow unruly while waiting on their smith,” he said. “Arnoll sorted them out yesterday, but their mischief will increase if it goes unchecked.”

Keir followed him out of the pebble vault, securing the door behind her. The two copper scullions were standing at the far end of the dim corridor near the oxhide vault. She stopped the tin scullion as he made to leave. “You did not mention this yesterday when I interviewed you.”

He shrugged. “It slipped my mind until now, when I realized we’d be treated to the same, unless someone kept those boys in order.” He took a step toward the Lake Stair and the copper scullions. “I suppose Arnoll will do it, even if you don’t. He’s responsible that way. Yesterday he noticed that the privy boys had collected one ingot too many of tin and took it from them. To return it to the vaults, no doubt.”

Wait. What?

Keir thought back to yesterday evening’s check-in. She didn’t remember the armor smithy turning in anything save the bags of scales they’d fashioned that day. She would have noticed—with ingots missing from the tally—if an extra ingot had turned up.

And Gael had recovered copper and bronze, not tin.

There’s something wrong here, she thought, and I don’t have time now to delve into it.

“Ravin, I want to hear more about Arnoll and the boys. Will you speak with me after I finish in the privy smithy?”

The scullion tipped his head to one side, considering. “Aye, that’ll do. The tin’ll still be heating. My opteon can spare me.” He paused. “Unless you need to hear me elsewhere. That’ud take too long.”

“No, I’ll just draw you aside,” she reassured him.

He nodded and continued toward the stairwell, clapping one of the copper scullions on the shoulder as he passed. “Think you’ll drop it today?” he gibed.

All three of them—copper and tin together—laughed.

The oxhide ingots were large and heavy, weighing eighty pounds each and shaped like animal hides, with a leg protruding at each corner to provide a good gripping point. During the trip from the mines to the tower, they were tied to the pack harnesses of two mules, one beast to each side. If four trolls instead of two could transport an ingot from the vaults to the smithies, it might be easy. But the stairwells—generous though the main ones were—were yet too narrow for that.

Instead, one troll gripped a front leg and heaved, while another troll gripped a back leg and heaved. The ingot, held at hip level, hung to below their knees.

As the two copper scullions eased their oxhide ingot through the vault doorway, Keir heard a shrill voice calling her name. “Keir! Where are you? I’m sorry I’m late! Keir?”

The privy scullion. Finally.

Keir locked the oxhide vault and hurried back toward the Regenen Stair. The boy would need copper ingots, tin ingots, and the failed scissors and ladle from the bronze vault. Three doors to unlock—again. Three doors to re-lock—again. What had kept the boy?

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The Tally Master, Chapter 7 (scene 33)

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Lying on his sleeping couch in his chambers, Gael found sleep eluding him. In his weariness, he’d forgotten to swing the shutters closed, and the moonlight shone brightly on the leather hangings, the scattered small tables and backless chairs. But it was not the light alone that kept his eyes open.

Every inch of him ached, his feet and legs from all the stair climbing of the day, his shoulders and neck from tension, and his head from his repellent discoveries.

Were it not so late, he would have visited the saunas in the yard to sweat the soreness from his body and the churning images from his thoughts: Martell aggrieved that any suspicion rested on him, the simple sweep grabbing for a drop of molten tin, the bullied lunch boy calmed by Keir, and—worst of all—Arnoll holding a stolen ingot.

Gael turned toward the wall, bright in the moonlight, and then got up to close the shutters. His legs protested, and returning to the soft sheepskins cushioning his couch felt good. But still he could not sleep. Even with the greater dimness.

Very well. If sleep refused him, he would think. What did he know?

When the theft of his tin first came to his attention during the tallying, he’d assumed an error had been made. That had proved incorrect. He’d suspected petty pilfering next. Perhaps a miserable scullion, hoping to barter it for better treatment, had impulsively swiped an ingot. Perhaps a simpleton had been attracted by the metal’s glossy sheen.

In retrospect, his suspicions seemed ludicrous. The metals flowing through Belzetarn were far too well monitored—by himself—for a lowly scullion to succeed with thievery. Only someone with more reach, more resources, and more ambition would or could arrange the intricate plans necessary.

And . . . tin was not shiny right out of the mold. It required careful polishing.

No, he was right to bend his scrutiny to the powerful.

And, yet, he’d been wrong in assessing the march as the one troll in the entire citadel who would never steal from his lord. Dreas had stolen tin. And he’d stolen it through Arnoll, the one friend Gael was certain possessed an unbreakable integrity.

Gael turned over yet again, unable to find a comfortable position.

He’d told Arnoll that he trusted him still. He wanted to trust him. But, in truth, his trust was shaken. He understood Arnoll. He suspected he would do the same as Arnoll in a like situation. But . . . he was not sure he could admit Arnoll to his deepest confidence in the immediate future.

Gael adjusted the pillow beneath his head. A stray moonbeam penetrated a chink in the shutters, illuminating a pattern of triangles stamped into one of the leather hangings.

Another unwelcome thought crossed Gael’s mind.

If the march could use Arnoll to steal tin, then surely the magus or the castellanum might also use another’s hands to reach into the smithies. Hells. The regenen himself could do so, although Gael still could not take that possibility seriously. The regenen would not stoop to steal from his secretarius—and thus from himself.

The castellanum seemed the most likely thief. Barris, in the kitchens, had mentioned that the castellanum was inviting many more underlings to the honor of dining in one of the three great halls. Gael himself had noted one of them. Could one of the castellanum’s guests be stealing for him?

The stray moonbeam vanished.

Gael wriggled a heavy fold of blanket off his toes.

What about the magus?

He remembered the rumors that had leaked from Pirbrant before the last battle on the plain between the rivers. Rumors that had subsequently proven true. How Heiroc’s brother Erastys had fallen in love with a very proper lady who spurned him. How the lady had possessed one of the talismans of ancient Navellys. How Erastys and Nathiar together had plotted to obtain what they wanted from the lady: Erastys, the lady’s passion; Nathiar, the lady’s artifact.

Her artifact was not one of the lodestones. Those were long lost, all five of them. The lady held one of the originally more numerous amulets, still very rare in this day and age.

Nathiar had cast the glamor that would steal both the lady’s virtue and the lady’s treasure as one.

But Nathiar’s magery had failed him, bringing the truldemagar upon him.

Nathiar had stolen honor and dignity and innocence before in the court of Hadorgol. Gael had witnessed it. Would he also steal metal, here in Belzetarn? Gael had no evidence to indicate that it was so.

He didn’t truly know much of anything. Suspicions and possibilities were not the same as real knowledge. It didn’t help that two competing concerns pressed him. He absolutely needed to get to the bottom of this thievery, but he also must resolve the dangers posed by the cursed gong brought in by the scouts of the Third Cohort.

As things stood, Gael had given neither problem sufficient attention.

Worse . . . the mere presence of the evil gong seemed to exert an insidious effect upon him. And he was all too aware that it lay close, with merely two doors between it and him.

After seven years of eschewing the manipulation of energea, he’d used his powers thrice today. First to ease the simpleton’s pain. Next to clear the disguised copper ingot of its tin mask. Thirdly to set a trap to catch his thief. Or one of his thieves. And . . . had either the retrieved bronze or the tin honestly given to Arnoll proved to be tainted like that disguised copper ingot, Gael would have cleansed it without a thought.

Was Carbraes correct in his belief that any use of energea worsened a troll’s affliction? Or was it merely the dangerous energea—the searing orange—that did so?

Gael thumped his pillow, irritated with himself. He had to get some sleep, or neither of his problems would receive even so much as the inadequate focus as he’d funneled into them today.

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The Tally Master, Chapter 7 (scene 32)

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Arnoll’s tallow dip flickered on the deep golden hue of the bronze ingots upheld by Gael and on the pale copper of the ingot in Arnoll’s other hand.

“Cayim’s nine hells,” swore the smith softly.

Gael was past swearing. Tonight he’d learned that his most trusted friend—Arnoll—had stolen from him. He’d discovered that someone was using forbidden energea to tamper with his ingots. And now he’d retrieved two bronze ingots, when only one should be missing, according to Keir’s latest tally of the bronze vault. How many more anomalies within his tally chamber and the smithies would he encounter? At this point, no unpleasantness seemed impossible.

Setting the ingots on the floor, Gael inhaled and then wished he hadn’t. His nose was no more accustomed to the stench in the latrine than when he’d first pulled its door open.

So. Had tonight’s fugitive hidden the bronze in the bucket niche? Or was it someone else? But that was not the important question. Who had hidden those ingots? Gael needed to know, preferably without alerting the thief. Which meant he couldn’t wake a scullion and assign him the duty of guarding the privy door and reporting every troll who approached it. The whole tower would soon know of Gael’s inexplicable concern with a clogged latrine, if he did that.

Fortunately—or unfortunately—he possessed another option.

Disciplining himself to defy the foul odor, he inhaled slowly and steadily. On an equally slow out-breath, he let his inner sight open. The lattice of energea humming within the stones of the bucket niche featured a slow, cold vibration of silver so dim it seemed a ghost of metal.

Gael reached inside himself, pulling on his heart node and guiding the resultant stream of power along his arcs, bright and sparkling. As the tiny stars leapt from his fingertips, he directed them to lattice intersections within the stone’s energea. Only when a hundred or more small lights winked and blinked in these new locations did he stop, sighing with weariness.

“Did you just do what I think you did?” asked Arnoll.

“My energea will cling to the hand of the next troll to reach inside this hidey-hole,” said Gael. “I doubt the thief will leave his plunder here indefinitely. Once he checks on it or attempts to move it . . .”

“He’ll be marked,” concluded Arnoll.

“Unless he leaves Belzetarn altogether, I’ll find him,” said Gael.

“You clever devil,” murmured Arnoll.

Gael stifled a snort. Grabbing up his bronze ingots, he replaced the loose stone in the sidewall of the bucket niche and pushed to his feet. His ankle protested, and he almost didn’t make it, his legs wobbled so. He replaced the bucket in the niche, retrieved the saucer of the guttered tallow dip from the floor, and stepped out into the stairwell. Arnoll closed the door behind them.

“What next?” said the smith.

Gael shook his head. “These go in my tally room for now. Then we’ll get you that tin ingot for Dreas. And then—I’m for bed. I’m not going to solve this tangle tonight.”

Arnoll grunted.

They took the stairs slowly this time, climbing past the place of arms where their fugitive had escaped and then onward to the lowest of the great halls. Moonlight glimmered through the tall embrasures on the southern curve of the circular space, shedding silver light across the cleared floor and casting an ominous shadow from the massive central pillar wrapped in its twining stair.

The Regenen Stair and its landing with the door into Gael’s tally room lay exactly opposite the Cliff Stair. Gael led the way across, his soft shoes noiseless on the stone, Arnoll’s boots thunking beside him.

Wordlessly, Gael unlocked the padlock on the tally room door and ushered Arnoll inside.

The moonlight was stronger within, flooding through the casements which Keir had unshuttered, illuminating the pigeonhole cabinets lining the walls, but casting the two desks—surrounded as they were by cabinetry—into deep shadow.

Gael lit two fresh tallow dips from Arnoll’s, which was nearly out.

Keir had left the parchments for the morning’s tally neatly stacked and properly ruled—ready—on his own desk. Gael marked one tin ingot (for Dreas) checked out on the sheet for the tin vault, placed the three recovered ingots—one copper and two bronze—atop the parchments, and wrote a brief note of explanation. That would do for now.

“Come,” he said to Arnoll.

The climb to the vaults was equal to that from the smithies to the tally room. Going slower with each twist of the stair around the newel post, they passed the passage to the first balcony and one to the second balcony, then the one to the great hall where Gael had dined that evening. The vaults lay above it.

Unlocking the tin vault and one of the coffers within it was a simple matter.

Arnoll turned the tin ingot in his hands while Gael locked up behind himself. This ingot possessed the right thickness and the right energea. Gael had checked.

“Come to me when you need another,” he said.

Arnoll looked at him ruefully. “I regret this.”

“But you would do it all again, if necessary.”

Arnoll’s expression firmed, but he did not answer.

Gael clapped him on the shoulder. “I’ll keep the march’s secret.”

Arnoll looked down.

“Surely you knew I would,” Gael pursued.

Arnoll looked up. “Of course. But it was not my secret to tell.”

Well, Gael understood that. Hard as it was to accept that Arnoll had betrayed Gael with his theft, in another way Arnoll had proved his faithfulness thoroughly. The smith would not betray an older friend for a newer one. Gael could hold to that, must hold to that, even when a more thorough loyalty to himself might feel more welcome.

“Arnoll. I trust you.”

Arnoll placed his hand over Gael’s, still resting on his shoulder. “And I trust you,” he replied.

As they moved toward the stairs, Arnoll stopped again. “What did you want to consult me about?” he asked.

“Come to my chambers tomorrow evening,” said Gael, “and I’ll show you.”

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The Tally Master, Chapter 6 (scene 31)

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Crawling around the privy smithy bearing one of Arnoll’s tallow dips, Gael collected fully as much dirt and soot on his tunic and trews as he’d expected. The smithy scullions kept the forge area clean and tidy. The tower sweeps kept the floors and counters clear. But the odd corners, crevices between various fixtures and the wall, and the surfaces below the tool racks collected finely sifted ash ground into grease.

It had never occurred to Gael that he should squirm on his belly under the lip of the privy forge or squish between the counters and the back wall, but now that he had, he would develop a few additional protocols for smithy maintenance. He should probably first check the other smithies to see if they suffered the same pattern of encrusted dirt. They might not.

Arnoll found a set of elegant two-tined forks in an empty quenching pail. Who knew which day they were forged? Gael himself found nothing. And neither of them discovered any missing ingots.

When Arnoll closed the lid of a chest of sand with a snap, Gael shook his head. “I think we both knew there was nothing to find,” he said. “But I had to check.”

Arnoll surveyed the blackened knees of his trews ruefully. “The leather grooms are going to beat me senseless when I hand these over for cleaning,” he remarked.

Gael’s knees were no better. “Time to quit for tonight, I think,” he said.

Arnoll nodded and led the return to the counter in his smithy where the stolen copper ingot still rested. Gale collected it, and then they headed for the exit on the back wall where the Cliff Stair climbed to the magus’ quarters below the battlements.

Gael was glad for his tallow dip, burning low at this point though it was. The torches in the tunnel between the smithy and the stairwell were doused, as was usual at this hour. And so few trolls climbed the Cliff Stair at night that only every third landing was illuminated by a flaming torch. Gael wasn’t sure why Theron bothered to order any torches lit. The bright landings merely meant one’s eyes must work harder to adjust on the dark ones and all the dark steps in between.

In silence, Gael climbed side by side with Arnoll, past the place of arms adjacent to the melee gallery and on toward the place of arms on the next level. His thighs felt weak as pouring copper, and his left ankle stabbed fiercely each time he took the next tread with his left foot. He’d chosen the outer position, which required longer steps, to spare Arnoll. Now he wished he hadn’t. Arnoll hadn’t climbed up and down the tower all day the way Gael had.

As they rounded the newel post toward a landing that should have been bright with flickering torch flame, Gael put out a hand to check Arnoll.

The landing was dark.

Gael paused, listening.

The sound of a door closing softly somewhere above was followed by the click of a latch, a gasp, and then running footsteps, headed up. Someone—perhaps the someone who’d doused the torch—had noticed the glow of their tallow dips approaching.

Gael looked sharply at Arnoll. Arnoll looked back, nodded.

And then they were running, shoving their weary bodies upward with all the speed possible. Whoever it was had a guilty conscience. They’d catch him, question him, and find out why.

Reaching the dark landing brought momentary relief to Gael’s tiring legs—three full strides across a blessedly flat floor. Then they were climbing again, up and up, around and around.

Gael felt his pace slowing, heard the furiously echoing steps of their quarry drawing away. He pushed harder, but sheer will wasn’t enough to hasten his faltering feet.

The footsteps above quickened, then cut off altogether.

Gael cursed and halted, slumping against the outer wall of the stairwell. Arnoll stopped a few steps above him, equally winded.

“He’s left the stair,” panted the smith.

Gael nodded, bent with one hand on his knee, sweatily clutching his copper ingot, the other holding his tallow dip, lungs heaving.

“Hells,” said Arnoll. “A dozen deep-set doorways, the central stair, half a dozen dark embrasures, and the entrances to the three other stairwells. We’ll never catch him.”

That was a given, now that they’d broken off the pursuit. But Gael shared Arnoll’s unspoken conclusion. Their fugitive could be anywhere by now.

Gael hung there, catching his breath. His grubby tunic clung to his shoulders and back as though someone had dumped a bucket of quenching water over him. His ribs ached, and his arms wobbled almost as badly as his legs.

“Let’s go see what’s behind that door just above the dark landing,” he said at last, straightening. “A latrine, I think. But.”

Arnoll nodded.

Gael’s panting had slowed, as had Arnoll’s. They waited several moments more. Descending on wobbly legs would be worse than climbing.

“Come,” said Gael, starting down, taking the inside position this time.

Arnoll joined him with a grunt. “I almost wish I owned a cane,” he muttered.

Gael snorted a laugh. Arnoll with a cane was ludicrous, but Gael wanted one, too. Each step down to the next tread threatened to collapse his legs entirely. Had his troll-disease advanced another notch? Or did he merely sit too long every day at his tally desk?

When they reached the door located three steps above the dark landing that should have been bright, Gael eased it open. A powerful stench rolled out.

There was indeed a latrine behind that door, with the usual arrangement: a square of stone floor, a closed stone bench at the back, a round hole carved in the seat of the bench, and a slanting ceiling overhead.

So much was ordinary.

The wastes brimming at the lip of the latrine hole were not.

The latrines located off the Cliff Stair emptied into long channels descending through the walls of the tower, carrying their contents to the steep cliff located on this side of the citadel. The channel emptying this latrine—like several others—possessed a dogleg and required regular maintenance to prevent clogging. Such maintenance was always scrupulously provided, never neglected. Why had it been neglected now?

Gael reeled back, jostling Arnoll and nearly tumbling both of them down the two steps to the landing.

Somehow, Arnoll retained his balance, steadying Gael as well.

“Sias!” gasped Arnoll.

Gael surged forward to close the door. It didn’t reduce the stench much, and they retreated to the next landing up, where an arrowslit provided fresh air. Their tallow dips flickered wildly.

“What in hells?” said Gael.

Arnoll shook his head.

Gael pressed his lips with a forefinger, thumb beneath his chin. “Someone didn’t want to be discovered there.” He thought a moment, resisting what came next. “I’m going to check it thoroughly.” If only he’d not doffed his caputum when he changed his clothes. He could have pulled the fabric that covered his shoulders up over his mouth and nose.

“Wait here,” he told Arnoll, handing him the copper ingot.

The smith chuckled. “Oh, I’m coming with you,” he said.

“You need not.”

“Oh, I know, I know. But I’m curious, too.”

The stench outside the latrine door had not dissipated appreciably. It strengthened unpleasantly when Gael opened the door. He buried his mouth and nose in the crook of his elbow, held his tallow dip high with the other arm, and stepped inside, Arnoll hard on his heels.

Surprisingly, the floor was clean and dry, as was the surface of the bench.

Why had the castellanum’s scullions cleaned the latrine compartment thoroughly, but left the clog untouched? Surely they’d earn a birching that way.

Gael studied the slanting ceiling behind the bench, the small blocks of stone neatly fitted together, the mortar between them tidy. The side walls were similar. The front wall possessed a small arched niche to one side of the door, with a bucket of water resting within.

Gael removed the bucket, handing it to Arnoll, who set it down on the bench, well away from the brimming hole.

Gael crouched, hampered by the cramped space, peering into the empty bucket niche. His tallow dip flickered and went out, but he waved aside Arnoll’s offer of his, setting the extinguished saucer on the floor and probing the niche with his freed hand.

The mortar felt crumbly and loose. He worked a piece out, held it up in the dim light of Arnoll’s dip, then put it down to pick at the loose mortar again. Following the seam, he discovered a section lacking mortar altogether. His fingertips traced out a rough rectangle. He probed for purchase, then drew out the unmortared stone.

“Hah!” Arnoll exclaimed.

Gael stayed grimly silent, reaching into the now open cavity in the niche’s sidewall.

Somehow, he felt entirely unsurprised when he pulled out two nested ingots of bronze.

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