For a quarter of an hour neither of them spoke, and the only sounds in the root vault were the steady drip of lime water and the dry crunch of Pip eating chalk.
The creature had nosed a vein of soft, clean marl out from between two petrified roots and was biting off small grey corners with the side of its jaw. As it chewed and swallowed, the raw crack in the green clay repair along its shell seam slowly stopped weeping, though its interior lights stayed low and dull.
Edris sat with his splinted left leg stretched straight across the gravel, rubbing his numbed right knee to keep the cramp out. Without Ysabet standing watch with her tamer’s pole or Ashaun staring at him over a blade, the quiet felt strangely ordinary, like sitting in a stable yard during a rainstorm.
“Why her?” Edris asked at last, his voice rough from cold water.
Pip paused with a flake of white marl on its lower jaw plate and tilted its head toward him.
“Ysabet Orre,” Edris said, gesturing slightly with his right hand. “You have the seed of a power that built roads across three provinces in your chest, and you haul ropes and eat ditch clay at the whistle of a marsh tamer with a ruined hand. Do you love her because she bought your crate before my agent noticed the lot, or simply because hers was the first kennel smell you learned?”
