Water lapped over the top of Ysabet’s boots before the rest interval ended.
They had halted halfway across the Lake of Borrowed Faces, where the sunken limestone causeway widened around a broken survey pillar. Ahead of them, lashed to a broad raft of quarried pumice slabs, the black-stone cage held Azhrak’s bell clapper above the current. Precentor Edris Keth lay propped beside the cage with his broken left upper leg bound in a long wooden splint from hip to ankle. Every time the water shifted under the pumice, his jaw tightened and his right hand gripped the lashing rope.
Ysabet checked the oilskin satchel slung high under her left arm before touching the tow line. Inside, wedged between dry wool rags so it could not tip, sat the half-covered wooden mouse box. She lifted the flap with two fingers of her left hand. The old field mouse poked its nose up to the air holes, whiskers twitching at the smell of wet iron and cold chalk, then backed down onto its oat straw with a scrape of its stiff hind leg.
“Still dry,” Ysabet murmured, buttoning the flap over her ribs.
Beside the raft, Ashaun knelt on one knee with her eyes shut and her functional right hand resting on the hilt of the narrow bell dagger. Her left arm—solid, cloudy stone from the elbow down—leaned against a wet bollard. She breathed in slow counts of four while Sister Osha stood over her, reading out the names of seven barley…
