The iron door under the observatory wall had not been oiled in twenty years, and it screamed when Osha dragged it back.
“Inside,” she said, wedging her heavy archive case against the stone jamb so the wind could not slam the plate shut on Lilt’s wings. “Quickly. Once they clear the lens court, they’ll look for the mule path first.”
Ysabet went through sideways, keeping her left arm curved around Pip’s shoulders to guide it over the high threshold. Behind them, across the cracked paving of the plateau, a man shouted an order that the wind tore in half. Metal clinked against stone—not the empty belt loops the temple escorts had shown when the truce began, but the short, flat ring of the concealed blades drawn from under their cloaks.
Pip stumbled on the first step down. Its front right foot missed the worn edge, and its fractured antlers scraped the low stone arch with a dry crunch.
Clear mineral sap welled from the cracks along both tines. A cold drop fell onto Ysabet’s wrist. At the same moment, her right palm throbbed with a fierce, needle-sharp heat across the fresh blister where the lens backlash had burned her skin over her two bent fingers.
