Len looked at Martha’s blistered feet, then looked up into Urel’s weeping eyes.
“She doesn’t have to put weight on the heel, Urel,” Len said, his voice quiet, calm, and grounded in the hard-won power of a courier who had carried wounded team members off frozen mountain passes. “We have a four-wheeled medical hand-gurney parked in the laundry bay. Rubber solid tires, double straw mattress, and greased wheel hubs. We lift her from this cot, lay her flat on the mattress, and roll her directly onto the clinic service rail. She won’t take a single step.”
He looked at the two young girls huddled at the foot of the bed. They were clutching each other, their small hands white with tension, their teeth clamped together to prevent their chattering from making a sound.
Len reached into his coat pocket. Then he pulled out a small, carved wooden toggle—a smooth piece of boxwood used on courier mail-sacks. He pressed it into the older girl’s palm, closing her fingers around the wood.
“Listen to me,” Len said gently, meeting her scared gaze. “My name is Len Vey. I’m a courier of the Tern Road. My father worked these same galleries with your father seven years ago. In five minutes, we’re going to take your mother out of this mountain. When we open that door, you stay beside my right hip. You hold your sister’s hand, you keep your heads down, and you don’t make a sound. Not a whisper, not a cry…
