Pip looked at the iron jaws of the horn-nippers in Ysabet’s left hand.
A stray drop of alum-water splashed off the edge of the overhang and hit the middle blade of the half-crown. Pip flinched hard, a low hiss escaping between its blunt mineral tooth plates as a thread of dark sap oozed from the skin where the black horn met its skull.
Two months ago at the stone-swift quarry, or on the burning pier at Little Harbor, Pip would have lunged forward into the nippers without waiting—or struck its own head against the limestone wall to smash the hurting growth off by force, treating its own body like a bad tool that had to be broken into shape on the spot whenever someone was in danger.
This time, Pip did not lean into the saw.
Slowly, it lifted its thin regrown forefoot and touched the base of the black half-crown, right where the fused war-tines met the old Suth-cloak binding and the pale lattice antler on the left side. Beneath the skin of its brow, thick, hot vessels pulsed in time with the distant bronze hum of the lake—vessels that ran straight down behind its right eye and into the seed organ in its chest.
