Two engineers pried the bent iron bars off the top of the black-stone cage while a corporal lashed Ashaun’s right wrist to a petrified root post six feet from the raft.
They did not bother tying her left arm. The pale, translucent stone from elbow to blunt wrist hung heavy against her muddy knee, cold from the river spray.
Commander Veyt stood beside the pumice slabs, wiping wet grit off Edris’s oilskin schematics with her thumb while her men set up spare grease-lamps to replace the lanterns Pip’s grounded surge had shattered. When the first new wick caught, Veyt turned and looked carefully at the grey stubble on Ashaun’s scalp, the old harness scars across her collarbone, and the stone forearm resting on the gravel.
“Fourth Vanguard,” Veyt said quietly. “South wall at Falling Bells. You’ve got the quarry-ash mark in the stone.”
Ashaun spat a mouthful of grit and blood through her broken front teeth and said nothing.
Veyt crouched on her heels just out of kicking range, resting her forearms on her dented greaves. She did not look angry that three of her men had bruised shins or that Edris had vanished up the drain. She looked like a tired field officer who had finally found another professional in a room full of priests and beasts.
