By late afternoon, the note from the loft had done more damage to Rowan's remaining structure than the bolt itself.
Grimridge felt it even where no one said her name.
The great hall kept moving under witness, the same way it had since the reserve books, the road ledgers, the cull gate, the hall lamp, the care cloth, and the sleeping line had all been dragged into the open and forced to mean something together. Bath women crossed with stores women. Hall cloth did not travel alone. Keys changed hands under watch. The cots still stood in their interlocked lines, not yet taken down, and the second table still held the continuation ledger, the route board, the key chest, and the ugly little stack of notes that had turned Rowan's wider war into instructions small enough to fit inside a sleeve seam.
Still, the house carried a different tension now.
Not fear.
Calculation.
