VIWhelm screwed a brass-ringed lens into his eye and studied the tiny spirals etched onto the memory spindle.
“Interesting,” he said after a few moments of scrutiny. “Yes, very interesting.” He looked up at Finn, his left eye huge through the lens. “I've never seen a spindle like this. Where did you say you got it?”
They stood in the workshop attached to Finn and Diane's cottage. It was a week since the earthquake. There had been no aftershocks for five days. Only a few people with badly damaged houses remained at the Moot Hall now. Some would be fixed, and some would be pulled down and rebuilt. Each day, everyone went to work repairing broken walls and cracked roads. Whelm, true to his word, had done what he could, lending his horse to lug materials, bending his own back to carry stone
