Dawn on their fourth morning broke clear and sharp, with rime frost silvering the boardwalk rails and white plumes of steam rising straight up from the hot springs into the windless air.
While Chaska and Ashaun strapped the folded cargo-gliding frame onto Lilt’s broad pack-pad and Osha wrapped her two surviving memory stones and her father’s notebook in oiled sheepskin inside her satchel, Ysabet carried their four leather water skins down to the stone cistern by the main spring. She had already fed the mouse its morning bit of soaked barley and tucked its slatted wooden box into the deep inner pocket of her wool coat, where her own body heat would keep the draft off its stiff hind leg.
Iskren was already at the cistern, breaking a thin skim of ice off the overflow trough with the butt of an ash staff. He took two of the heavy water skins from Ysabet’s elbow so she would not have to hold their weight against her bruised left ribs while pulling the wooden plug.
“Keep to the east wall of the gorge for the first three miles,” Iskren said as clear, warm mineral water gurgled into the leather necks. “The sun hits that shelf an hour earlier, so the shale won’t be greased with black ice.”
