Half a mile away, where the narrow drainage tunnel climbed into a dry, vaulted junction of split sandstone, Ysabet called a halt so Edris would not faint on her shoulder.
They eased the priest down onto a flat shelf of rock. His face was the color of wet tallow, and his right leg was trembling almost as hard as the splinted left one from hopping up the slick incline between Ysabet and Osha. Siv, Tern, and Moth dropped onto their bellies at the mouth of the lower passage, tongues lolling over their iron-collared jaws as they watched the dark behind them.
Before touching her own waterskin, Ysabet unbuckled her oilskin satchel and lifted out the half-covered wooden mouse box.
Pip limped over at once, listing slightly on its cracked left shell plate, and lowered its chin to the stone beside Ysabet’s knee. It was careful to angle the right side of its head—where the five black blades of the new half-crown curved above its smaller eye—well away from the wooden box so the sharp horn tips would not frighten the small creature inside.
Ysabet slid the wooden access strip back with her left thumb and poured three drops of clean water into a tin bottle-cap. The old field mouse climbed out onto the edge of the box, dragging its stiff hind leg a fraction before catching its balance, drank greedily from the cap, and then stretched up to touch Pip’s scarred nose-plate with its whiskers.
