Half a mile down in the fog-choked center of the valley, Edris’s drill rods were still clinking against rock, yet nobody suggested marching down into the basin before dark.
“If we walk into a drill camp at twilight with tired eyes, a wolf that can’t bite, and a harness strap hanging by three threads, we deserve whatever cage we end up in,” Chaska said practically, dropping her bundled glider frame behind the granite outcrop where the rock screened them from the lower trail. “We sleep here by the clean water, fix our gear, and look at their scaffolding when we have morning light.”
No one argued. The quiet around the Return spring and the fresh gravel of Amren’s grave asked for a night’s keeping, and every body in the camp had deferred maintenance to pay.
While Osha sat near the two graves with her father’s small notebook and his thick expedition ledger open side by side on her knees—comparing his early marginal questions with the final winter record—the rest of the party went to work around the small shielded stove.
Chaska unbuckled Lilt’s wide leather gliding harness and pulled it across her lap. The main left chest-keeper had frayed halfway through during the long haul up from Upside Ford and the squeeze through the limestone wash. Lilt lay flat on the cool granite beside her, extending her broad left wing-fin so the cool air could reach the old pink rub-scar along her flank. Using her belt knife, Chaska cut away…
