By mid-afternoon they had rented a narrow, low-roofed stable behind a tallow chandler’s yard on the west side of Kesh, where the smell of rendering mutton suet was strong enough to mask both wolf-iron and wet sandray feathers. Once the yard door was barred from inside, Ysabet gave the three-tap signal on the barrow shaft and lifted the greasy horse-blanket all the way off.
Pip stood up immediately, shaking all six legs one after another with the stiff, offended dignity of a dog that had been made to sit in a wash-tub. It rubbed its snout against Ysabet’s knee, checked that the mouse was still asleep in its wood-shaving box, and then went straight to the pile of fresh quarry slate Kiv had bought at the gate, crunching down two flat gray slabs with loud, gritty satisfaction.
Chaska swung down from the hay-ladder where she had been tying Lilt’s folded cargo-frame struts under the rafters and dusted oat-chaff from her palms.
“I checked the upper caravanserai by the north horn-arch,” she said, crouching by the water bucket where Osha was counting their remaining silver and copper onto a saddle-cloth. “There’s a public provision train of forty mules and six covered carts pulling out at first light tomorrow. Potters, salt-boilers, and three wool-weavers’ families heading up to the winter sheep-cotes at the mouth of the lower Cradle valley. Their head drover is short two outriders because of an early grippe in the barracks. He told me if we’ve got three trained…
