Back under the harness shed eaves, nobody shouted at Pip or drove it away from the fire.
That would almost have been easier for the creature to understand. On the road from Bent Reed, people who were afraid of what lived inside Pip had either tried to lock it in a box or come at it with iron. Instead, Iskren knelt on an old grain sack beside Pip’s torn right flank with a wooden bucket of warm, freshly dug green spring clay and a flat bone spatula.
“Hold your middle leg forward a bit,” Iskren said evenly, just as he had spoken to the marsh deer that morning. “This is going to sting where the sour salt got under the rim, and then it’ll cool.”
Pip stood rigid on the planks, its chin pressed flat against Ysabet’s left boot and its interior lights dimmed to a faint, sickly olive. As Iskren spread the heavy green clay over the raw four-inch strip where the shell had dissolved and torn away, a sharp hiss of steam rose from the exposed tissue. Pip’s six legs quivered, and its scarred tongue clicked once against its tooth plates, but it did not pull back.
Ten paces away, Mava the cook came out of the kitchen canopy carrying a wooden trencher heaped with clean slate trimmings, crushed limestone, and two baked clay bricks from the bread oven’s broken hearth. She set the trencher down right in front of Pip’s nose.
