Steam from the marsh vents hung low over the boardwalks, smelling of wet chalk and boiled cabbage. Ysabet woke with her cheek against her folded coat and her left hand resting on the slatted lid of the mouse’s box. Inside, the mouse was already awake, scratching its good hind foot against a dry piece of oatcake. Its bad leg still dragged a little when it turned, stiff from the old injury in Bent Reed, though its coat had grown thick on camp porridge and warm air.
Ysabet sat up slowly. Her left ribs gave a dull twinge where the trap-line beam had bruised them the week before, and the two smallest fingers of her right hand were curled tight against the scar on her palm. She flexed what she could over the steam rising between the pine planks, then lifted the canvas flap of their shelter.
Pip was not on its bed of dry sedge.
It was out in the middle of the clearing, carrying a wooden water bucket by the hemp bail in its sideways jaws. The thick green clay Iskren had packed into its softened shell the night before had dried to a dull olive crust along its flanks, contrasting sharply with the older chalk-white plates along its spine. Beneath the seams, its interior lights glowed the color of pond weed in shallow sun. A copper dipper hung from one of its stubby moisture-sensitive antler buds, clinking against the strips of Mother Suth’s old moss cloak that still…
