Sister Osha set the brass-bound trunk on the stone table, unlatched the lid with cold fingers, and lifted out the first archive stone. It was the size of a goose egg, ground from smoky river quartz with old copper guide marks inlaid around its middle. She placed it in the shallow brass reader dish at the edge of the table nearest Pip and stepped back half a pace, keeping her left hand on the handle of her own leather-bound oak archive case, where her three study copies and her father’s small notebook rested beside her knee.
“This is the second half of the Red Ford record,” Osha said quietly. “The first fragment you touched at the caravan camp held Theru’s morning on the road with the six lost helmets. This stone holds the afternoon at the river.”
Pip looked up at Ysabet, then at Ashaun. Neither woman pushed it forward or tapped the bench. Keeping its right rear foot hooked lightly against the steel heel of Ashaun’s boot and matching her slow four-count breath, Pip stepped up to the low stone ledge, lifted its right foreleg, and pressed its blunt claws and silent, scarred muzzle against the smoky quartz.
Through the bond, the cold wind on the observatory plateau vanished into the roar of a brown, rain-swollen river.
