An hour after sunrise, while Osha was boiling oat porridge over the small fire and Ysabet was crumbling a bit of dried yolk into the mouse’s box, Rethi’s mother walked up the boardwalk toward them.
Senna was a tall, quiet woman who did the heavy leather-stitching for the camp’s draft harnesses. She carried the mended brass wind-lamp in her right hand and Chaska’s charcoal drawing of the spotted deer in her left. Her face was not angry, nor did she look over her shoulder for Iskren to back her up, yet Pip went completely still beside the woodpile the moment it saw the lamp in her fingers.
Senna stopped at the edge of their tarp, knelt on one knee so she was level with Ysabet and Pip, and set the brass lamp and the paper drawing gently on the dry plank between them.
“That’s a neat solder on the seam,” Senna said, looking straight at Pip rather than talking over its head to Ysabet. “Better than our tinker does with lead, and the selenite pane fits tight. Thank you for the thought.”
Pip’s two amber eyes stayed fixed on the lamp. Its fine shoulder filaments drooped until they touched the green clay crust on its flank.
