By late afternoon, the note from the loft had changed the air in Grimridge more deeply than the bolt itself.
The body had been carried away. The threshold had been washed. The grain room had been reset. Still, the house no longer moved around Rowan's war in quite the same way. The reserve books, the continuation entries, the White Marker note, the one-shot order, and the strip telling an inward hand to preserve herself had already shown how the line above Rowan thought. It was cold, practical, and stingy with risk. The message from the loft had added something uglier to that knowledge. They were no longer only weighing whether Rowan still deserved coin and movement. They had begun cutting away the hands that failed her, preserving only what still sat close enough to the center to hurt.
The great hall kept working through that truth.
