Chapter 33: The Lent Keystone

Sera turned the load screw a quarter, and the oldest keystone in Greywake answered with a knock like a knuckle on a full barrel. Ilan stood on the chamber floor with his left palm pressed to the flag. The hairline ran through the crown into his back teeth, a thin bright wire where the shock of the eleventh had gone through. The air tasted of wet lime and old iron. On the wall the dial hung at its lowest mark, where it had hung since the night of the crack. It was dawn on the sixteenth. They had buried Hobb on the thirteenth beside the Sallow footbridge he built, the cistern route had held since, and on the fourteenth Ilan had walked up to Coalgate to ask the heat merchant for a certified keystone and come back without an answer. Sera had put off this test for five days because…