Pip did not walk back to the fire.
It stood beside Ysabet’s boot for three slow breaths, its six legs planted wide in the trampled grass and its thin left-middle foot tapping once against a pebble. Through the bond came the sharp, metallic itch of curiosity—the same pull Ysabet had felt when it climbed into the flour sack at Bent Reed or leaned over the edge of the salt skiff to watch the blue crabs. Underneath that curiosity lay the cold caution the iron axles had taught it two days ago at the ore station.
It looked up at Ysabet’s face.
Ysabet kept her promise and stayed six paces back on the low bank. She laid her right hand flat on her knee, bent fingers open in the firelight, and tapped the ground once with her left heel.
“It’s an old record, Pip,” she said clearly. “Like the iron in the cart wheels, except someone meant to keep this one. If you touch it, you will see things that happened before we met. If it hurts, let go and come back.”
Ashaun watched from beside the nursery cart’s heavy wooden wheel. Her jaw was set hard enough to show the hollow above her broken molars, but she kept her right hand resting on the wood rather than her belt. Higher up the slope, Chaska had stopped copying map lines and stood with one hand on Lilt’s broad back so the sandray would not slide down the bank to investigate the…
