Pip turned from the lip of the drain and walked four paces back onto the solid flags, its six claws clicking an uneven rhythm over the grit. Stopping between Ysabet and Ashaun, it lowered its head and scraped the tip of its right antler across a dry patch of stone, drawing a short, sharp line pointing toward the pit.
Then its sideways jaw parted, showing the blunt mineral tooth plates inside, and its scarred tongue worked against the roof of its mouth.
“Go down,” Pip rasped. The two words came out low and dry, like gravel shifting in an iron pan. It touched the tip of its thin front claw to the flat of Ashaun’s salvaged crowbar, then tapped its own throat and pointed down the dark chute again. “Stop bell. Talk. Pip talk.”
Ysabet knelt on one knee beside a broken crate so she did not have to look down at the top of its shell. Her left hand went automatically toward the rough seam along Pip’s shoulder—the old habit of steadying an animal before a hard job—and stopped an inch from the shell when Pip tilted its head to watch her fingers.
Through the bond came a clear, stubborn push. Not anger, and not fear of her hand, but the memory of three different rooms: the orchard road, the observatory stair, the camp above the basin. In every one of them, when Precentor Edris Keth had spoken in his smooth, reasonable voice, Ysabet had stepped half a pace…
