An hour past noon, the wind changed.
First the snow stopped hissing against the high slate louvers. Then a deep, hollow booming echoed up from the southern gorge as the afternoon sun struck the dark shale cliffs below the keep, releasing the pent-up cauldron of geothermal steam from the lower vents. Up in the rafters, the wool ribbons Chaska had tied to the shutter bars lifted straight toward the ceiling, and a sudden draft of damp, warm air smelling of pine resin and hot sulfur pushed through the cracks of the great timber launch doors.
Down in the outer courtyard, someone began hammering on the barred postern gate with the butt of an iron spear, shouting in the clipped cadence of the Precentor’s road-bailiffs for Corven to draw the bolts.
“Time to go,” Ashaun said from the catwalk. She had lashed Suth’s empty wooden walking staff alongside her scabbard and strapped her pack tight with her right hand, bracing the buckles against her stone left forearm.
Corven sat on an overturned salt tub inside his tally room with the door half shut, making no move toward the courtyard gate, while Tomas and Reed hauled on the greased chain-windlass that raised the twenty-foot timber launch doors on the south parapet. The remaining drovers and peddlers had already packed their panniers and crowded into the sheltered stone stairwell by the kitchen, watching in silence as the heavy oak leaves swung outward over the sheer drop and a rushing column of warm vapor…
