Two hours after the tallow stove was banked, the cavern held only the low rumble of the ceiling river behind them and the occasional click of Moth’s iron collar as the wolf shifted in her sleep. Chaska was curled under her oilskin cloak with one boot touching Lilt’s tail-root so she would wake if the sandray stirred. Ashaun had taken the first watch near the outward fissure, sitting upright with Fesk’s unstrung bow across her knees and her stone left forearm propped on a flat block of shale.
Osha had not lain down. She sat near the back wall where a grease-wick burned inside a pierced tin lantern, her knees drawn up and her father’s small leather-bound notebook open on her lap. Beside her hip lay the two remaining memory stones she had saved from the moth fortress—one smooth gray oval holding Theru’s laughter by an old campfire, the other dark and heavy with the final hours of Falling Bells. She was not touching either stone. She had her brass calipers and traveling ink-horn laid out on a dry handkerchief, trying to copy the scratched lettering from the pry-bar handle into her father’s book, and every time her nib touched the paper her hand jerked enough to blot the line.
