The sound of footsteps on the switchback path grew fainter. It dissolved into the quiet evening murmur of the valley until only the wind remained.
Bram Ash stood alone by the fresh mound of earth on the cemetery terrace.
The sun had sunk beneath the jagged crest of the western mountains. That left a broad band of cold, lilac twilight that stretched across the northern passes. The heat was dropping with the swift, unforgiving speed of an alpine spring. Frost was already beginning to form on the coarse blades of grass, silvering the unhewn granite marker at the head of Doma Reel’s grave.
Bram’s right arm hung motionless in its heavy black wool sling, bound tight against his chest by two buckled leather straps. The fractured collar bone throbbed with a dull, sickening pulse. A deep, bruised ache that flared whenever he took a breath of the thin, freezing mountain air. The bullet that had struck him during the state oil depot raid five days ago had passed through the meat of his shoulder. That left a jagged purple hole that Brant Sallow had packed with willow-bark paste and stitched with horsehair. The wound was healing cleanly. But the collarbone would always carry a lump the size of a pigeon’s egg where the broken edges had overlapped.
