Warm lime dust settled over the wrecked basin and stuck to everyone’s eyelashes.
Chaska sat on an overturned cable drum near the upper terrace wall with her teeth set together and her boots braced wide against the slick stone. Her left arm hung bent across her chest in the torn linen sling Ysabet had bound on the upper shelf; now that they had climbed down to the rim of the drain, Ysabet tucked a fresh folded linen pad under the wrist and adjusted the sling knot behind Chaska’s right shoulder, keeping the pull off the bruised collarbone. When the snapped suspension cable had whipped back across the platform during the collapse, the heavy wooden guide beam had caught Chaska squarely across the left shoulder point before dropping her onto the gravel ramp. Nothing poked through the skin, and the joint had not popped out of its socket, but any lift of the left elbow made her breath catch short and turned her face the color of wet dough.
“Too tight?” Ysabet asked, tucking the loose tail of linen in with her useful left hand while her two crooked right fingers rested lightly against Chaska’s sleeve.
“Tight enough to keep me from doing anything stupid with it,” Chaska said. She reached across with her good right hand, tested a coil of braided hemp hanging from her belt, and spat grey grit onto the flags. “Which is a pity, because half my good pulley line is still buried under that drill frame…
