The tension in Baron Hanrahan's Great Hall was so thick and oppressive that the people seated at the lower tables barely dared to make noise as they ate their meals. Some of them were business owners, important people by local standards, while others held positions of status among the servants in Ian Hanrahan's household.
But when Guild Master Isabell responded to the portly baron's mocking comments with biting retorts of her own, everyone in the hall who wasn't sitting at the High Table ducked their heads low and did their best to stifle any untoward laughter that threatened to spill past their lips. Wealthy they might be, or important to the functioning of the baron's estate, but no one at the lower tables thought themselves powerful enough to speak as candidly as this visiting engineer had!
