Near midnight, the high cloud rack parted above the Stormglass Teeth, and a cold half-moon spilled white light across the granite shelf.
Ysabet woke from a light, uncomfortable doze with her left side stiffening against the boulder. As she shifted her weight carefully and reached with her left hand to turn up the wick of the small grease lamp under her tin cup of water, she noticed that Oru was no longer lying behind the feather nest.
The two manticore cubs were buried deep in the gray goose down, curled into a single spiky ball that rose and fell with even breaths. Oru was sitting upright near the outer shadow line of the overhang, licking methodically at the outside of his right foreleg just above the ankle joint—the same leg whose fourth outer claw dragged sideways when he walked.
In the clear moonlight, Ysabet could see a four-inch gash across the thick sandy hide where a jagged iron bolt on the syndicate’s drop-grate had raked him while he was diving into the trench after the cub. Dark blood had clotted in the coarse fur, mixed with gritty clay from the pit floor, and every time he flexed his wrist to clean it, the split skin pulled open again.
