The flue was cleared before noon.
Nobody told me it would be. Nobody told me afterward that it had been. Two men in green came down with rods and a bucket, worked for an hour, said nothing but madam on the way in and madam on the way out, and by the time I came back from the inner ward my brazier drew like a proper fire for the first time in seventeen days.
That is how a court says a thing. It does not announce. It adjusts.
Over the next four days:
A glazier put glass in my window.
A crate arrived from the muniment stores with six instruments in it, three of which Ilvar had been requisitioning since before I was born. He unpacked them in the northern room without a word, held the bone saw up to the light for a long moment, and then said, to nobody, “Well.”
Four inner-ward households
