For a long time nobody spoke beside the boulder.
Inside Pip’s warm pouch, the mouse had woken at the tumble and was pressing its whiskers against the fold opening, checking whether the ground had stopped moving. Pip lowered one outer forefoot to let the mouse step onto Ysabet’s wrist, then drew its own six legs tight underneath its body.
It was not marching, and it had not locked its joints the way it had after eating the military iron at the way station. Instead it stared back and forth between the dark blue stone on the grass and the crooked white seam on its own left shell.
When it opened its sideways mouth, the sound that came out was not a click.
Its healed membrane ridge vibrated three times: a low, flat note that dropped at the end, then the sharper rising tone it used when calling Chaska, and finally a third, uncertain hum that broke off in the middle.
At the same instant, with its forefoot pressed tight against the bent fingers of Ysabet’s right hand, Pip pushed two pictures into the bond so clearly that Ysabet gasped aloud.
The first picture was the muddy six-legged scavenger dropping the stack of helmets onto the laughing soldier’s boot.
