“He isn’t lying about the pass,” Ashaun said once they were back behind Lilt’s broad folded wing in the west corner of the hall. She kept her voice below the hiss of the peat braziers. “And he isn’t setting a trap in the grain vault. Men like Corven don’t risk a brawl under their own rafters when they can hand a problem down the mountain and keep collecting copper.”
Ysabet sat on her pack with her left arm wrapped across her sore ribs, watching the old female moth above the third pillar. The insect’s right leg slipped half an inch on the smooth mortar; the iron pin in its left shoulder jerked taut, and a dark bead of fluid crept down the russet wool.
“If we go into his cellar tonight,” Ysabet said, “we pay him with those wings.”
Ashaun’s jaw tightened, showing the notched gap of her broken teeth. “If Edris catches us at noon tomorrow because we picked a fight with an innkeeper, he takes Pip back to the reliquary frame and those moths still hang on the beams. What are you proposing to do, Ysabet? Pull the spikes tonight and shoo twelve starving silk-backs into a blizzard? Their wing muscles haven’t worked since autumn. The wind outside will smash them against the cliff before they clear the ditch.”
