By midday, Grimridge had done something Rowan had spent months trying to prevent.
It had begun acting like it believed its own center.
Not only in the ledgers and route boards, though those had changed beyond anything Rowan could still have read from memory. The key chest no longer answered to one pair of hands. Bath routes crossed stores routes. Hall cloth no longer traveled one corridor by habit. The listed names from the continuation books moved under witness instead of disappearing into frightened corners. The house had begun to gather around Sable and the women nearest her in open sight, and the fact that the reserve book had written them down only made the truth harder to deny.
Sable felt that most clearly when the noon table was laid in the great hall.
