Above the valley where the shellhorn caravan had turned west into the grass, the road narrowed to broken slate switchbacks that smelled of wet iron and cold lichen. Suth’s long-legged wooden beetle walked six paces ahead of Ysabet’s boots. Its carved joints clicked steadily against the frost-cracked rock, pausing at every hairpin turn until the rest of them caught up, not because it thought about their lungs, but because the bond-scent rubbed into its grain kept it tethered to their pace.
Ysabet shifted Suth’s plain ash walking staff into her useful left hand and tucked her stiff right fingers inside the wool fold of her coat. The wind coming down from the observatory pass bit straight into her knuckles, setting a dull ache through the old crush-scar in her middle finger. Behind her, Lilt’s wing-claws scraped on the shale. The big female sandray had her wide gliding membranes folded triple against her flanks to keep the gusts from catching under them, and she was in a foul temper about walking when there was perfectly good air fifty feet to their right.
Whenever the trail pitched up over a stepped ledge, Lilt sidled close to Pip and planted her broad left shoulder against the creature’s translucent shelter shell to lever herself up the grade. Pip braced all six legs—including the thinner, nimble regrown fourth leg—and leaned back into the sandray’s weight with a low, contented rattle from its throat ridge. Since the quarry day, Pip’s shell had broadened enough to take…
