Chaska let out a short, flat whistle from the rim. “Open silver? That’s not Precentor Edris’s style. He likes tidy escorts and polite letters about sanctuary.”
“He ran out of patience for letters after the moth fortress,” Kiv said. He stood with his hands tucked lightly into his sleeves against the wind, careful to stay uphill of his dropped knife. Behind him, the oldest wolf, Siv, gave a low rumble in his chest and shifted his weight off his left forepaw. “A freelance hunter doesn’t know how to handle a growing seed, and half the men who took the advance won’t care if they crack its shell getting it into a sack, so long as there’s enough left to claim the weight at the temple gate.”
Ysabet looked down at Pip. The faint green lights under its patchwork shell flickered once, steady and cool, while the creature scraped a small groove in the gravel with its middle right foot. “He wouldn’t risk common hunters damaging it unless he thought he was running out of time,” she said.
“He is,” Kiv said. He glanced at Osha, his weathered face tightening around the mouth. “The southern salvage teams broke into the deep slag vault below Falling Bells last month, Osha. They brought up the central clapper from Azhrak’s final war bell.”
