Ashaun sat on the far side of the altar.
She did not unwrap the object. She laid it on the stone, within reach of her right hand, and put that hand on her knee. The fire had fallen low enough that Ysabet could see it trembling without the light interfering.
“Falling Bells,” Ashaun said. “Were you born when it happened?”
“No.”
“Then everything you know has had time to become a story.”
“Forty-three years,” Chaska said.
“Yes.”
There was no pride in the answer. Ashaun watched the water through the doorless opening.
“Our village took in wounded soldiers. There was fighting on the southern road. We thought wounded men would move on when they could walk.” She rubbed her thumb along the edge of her knee. “Some did. Others stayed. We were useful. We had beds, food, people who could mend boots.”
“The shared will?” Ysabet asked.
“Not at first. First there were requests. Then we were all needed. You can get a long way with needed.”
Pip made a little sound against Ysabet’s ankle. She had set the basket beside her again, but it preferred the cool stones near her boot. Its pouch hung empty. The mouse’s faint movements came from behind the statue.
“I spent eleven years in his battalion mind,” Ashaun said.
Chaska’s breath changed beside her.
“Every death?” Ysabet asked.
“Not every death everywhere. Mine. The people joined to the company around me. Sometimes others when we were drawn close. Enough.”
She reached for her water, missed the cup on the first attempt, and took it firmly on the second. Ysabet did not offer to help.
“Were you a soldier before?”
Ashaun looked at the stone end of her arm. “I was very good at cutting roots out of a field.”
For a while nobody spoke. The fish bones lay on a flat stone, silver-white in the dark. Chaska picked one from her sleeve and put it with the others.
“What do you want from us?” she asked.
“To know whether you’ve understood what you’re feeding.”
“It’s eaten cups and chalk,” Ysabet said. “It’s sheltered a mouse.”
“Yes. I’ve seen the mouse.”
“And a hare died beside it. It couldn’t understand why warming it didn’t help.”
Ashaun shut her eyes. When she opened them, her gaze went straight to Pip.
“I can see a difference,” she said. “Don’t make me pretend that means I know what hunger will do. Or fear. Or a hundred people on their knees.”
“Someone put a ring against it,” Ysabet said. “It screamed. A spear came through my roof, and afterward it crawled to the bird the roof had hurt. That’s why the leg is like that.”
Ashaun’s right hand closed.
“Edris?”
“You know him.”
“I know what he calls preservation.”
Chaska moved nearer the basket. “And that?”
Ashaun followed her gaze to the wrapped object.
“A piece of the bell that ended him. Made into a blade.”
“Will it kill Pip?”
“I believe it can.”
She said it plainly. Ysabet almost preferred the months of explanations that Edris would have given first.
“Why haven’t you?”
Ashaun looked at her shaking hand. “Do you want an answer that makes me look strong?”
“No.”
“I saw it try to protect something the size of my thumb. I remembered other things. They don’t fit neatly together.”
Pip climbed onto the basket’s rim. Ashaun caught the wrapping before it could roll toward the creature and moved it farther along the stone.
Even through the cloth, the blade seemed to pull something in Pip’s face. The smaller eye closed. Its jaw opened, then hung uncertainly. Ysabet lifted the basket away from the altar and set it near the upper doorway. Pip relaxed after several moments, but kept the eye shut.
“Cover it more,” she said.
Ashaun looked as though she might refuse. Then she took a second strip of cloth from her pack and bound it over the first.
“It’s still in the room.”
“I know.”
“I’m not giving it to you.”
“I didn’t ask.”
Chaska went to Lilt, checked the ground beneath her, and came back with her own bedroll. She put it where she could see Ashaun and the steps at the same time.
“The water’s rising,” she said. “Faster now.”
Ashaun stood. She used her stone forearm against the altar to help herself up, then picked up the wrapped blade with her right hand and returned it to her belt.
“There was a warning post,” she said. “Downstream. It may be under.”
Chaska took the lantern and walked to the doorway. She stopped before putting a foot onto the lower stone.
“Ysabet.”
Water moved over a step that had been dry when they landed. It carried a brown mat of reed fragments. Beneath the mat something struck the edge, sharp and hard, and slipped away.
Ashaun came beside them.
“Knife fish,” she said. “They’ll have been penned in the old feeder cut.”
Lilt slapped the grass outside. The line drawn beside her had become taut. Chaska looked at it, then at the dark water already climbing the edge of the bank.
“That’s not the only thing coming out of the cut,” she said, and hurried toward her.