Osha saw the fortress keeper before he saw her, and her fingers tightened so hard on the handle of her archive case that the leather creaked.
A stout man in a dyed wool surcoat was walking down the central aisle with a tallow lantern and a brass horn slung at his hip, checking the chalk marks on travelers’ sleeves. He had a neatly trimmed grey beard and the flat, deliberate walk of an officer who had spent twenty years counting flour sacks in garrison cellars.
“Corven,” Osha whispered, ducking her chin behind Ashaun’s broad shoulder. “He was third quartermaster at the Lower Ford depot when my father still worked the records. Edris signed his pension transfer five winters ago.”
She moved too late. Corven’s lantern swung past Chaska’s boots, caught the iron-bound corners of Osha’s temple archive case, and rose to Osha’s face. His eyebrows lifted. Then his gaze dropped to Ashaun’s translucent stone left forearm and the low, canvas-draped mound beside Ysabet’s calves, where a faint flicker of pale light leaked between two folds of oilcloth.
For three breaths the only sound was the kettle-mender’s snoring and the dry whistle of the old moth’s breathing tubes overhead.
“Sister Osha,” Corven said pleasantly, lowering his lantern so the glare left her eyes. “The road runners from the observatory said you had lost your way in the early snow. Bring your friends into the tally room. The draft by the hurdles is wretched for sore lungs.”
