They stayed above the flood for two nights.
The first passed in intervals measured by water checks. Chaska slept beside Lilt with one hand against the ray’s undamaged front edge. Ysabet dozed sitting up near Pip. Ashaun took the first watch without asking whether anyone trusted her enough for it.
By morning the channel carried fewer fish. The flood spread over the low grass instead of climbing the shrine steps. Ashaun marked the height with a piece of charcoal and checked it after breakfast.
“Falling.”
“Not fast,” Chaska said.
“Water takes its time when you want to leave.”
Lilt’s cuts looked cleaner in daylight. The long scratch remained tender, and Chaska left the harness off. She would not ride until they had seen it close. The ray moved around the upper bank in short, irritable shifts and refused a fish that smelled perfectly good to everybody else.
“She’s annoyed,” Chaska said.
“That’s reasonable.”
“At all of us. Not only the water.”
Pip spent most of the morning asleep. Its mouth no longer dripped when it lifted its head. Ysabet checked the pouch before letting the mouse return, making certain the lining had dried and warmed. The mouse went in voluntarily, after taking a grain from beside the box. Its damaged hind foot caught on the entrance; Pip lowered the fold until it could drag the foot through.
Ashaun watched from the altar.
“You’ve seen it do that before?”
“Not that exact movement.”
“You keep track.”
“I try.”
The older woman picked up Chaska’s drawing of the snagged bank. She held it with her right hand, resting the lower edge against her stone forearm.
“Put the post farther uphill,” she said. “That line was longer than you drew.”
Chaska moved beside her. They argued about the angle until Ysabet left them to it and inspected their food. The oats would last several days if they supplemented them. The clay bundle had shrunk faster. Pip’s reserves had been depleted before it entered the water; carrying a waterlogged body had not improved the problem.
There was pale sediment in the high bank. She scraped some into a spare cloth, then showed it to Ashaun.
“Do people dig here?”
“Reed cutters take clay farther north. This stretch catches old waste from the shrine.”
Ysabet put it back.
Ashaun led her to a fresh break in the bank a hundred paces upstream. The clay beneath the root layer was clean and soft. Ysabet took a small amount first, washed it, and offered it to Pip. The creature ate without the hesitation it had shown over the dirty bank sediment.
By evening it could cross the shrine floor unaided, though the bad leg stayed tight against its side. The five working feet made an irregular rhythm on the stones.
Ashaun’s hand shook when it passed too close.
Pip stopped and looked at the hand. She moved it behind her knee. The creature went on toward the mouse’s box.
Later, when Chaska was testing the skiff’s patch, Ysabet sat beside Ashaun on the dry step.
“Are you following us?”
“I was going north.”
“That wasn’t my question.”
“No.”
Ashaun laid a loose stone across the torn edge of her bedroll to stop the wind lifting it. Ysabet waited.
“I heard about something at the sale,” she said at last. “Then about the roof. I came this way because Quirin used to send travelers here when he wanted them off the road.”
“You could have waited somewhere we wouldn’t see you.”
“I could have.”
“Do you still mean to kill it?”
The question went out between them with no padding left around it.
Ashaun rubbed her thumb against her palm. “If I see that thing beginning again, I’ll try.”
Ysabet looked at Pip. It was dragging a reed toward the mouse, which ignored the offering entirely.
“Then I need to see what you’re seeing before your knife is out.”
“And if there isn’t time?”
Ysabet could not promise there would be. Ashaun knew about the bone in the roof; Ysabet had seen how quickly it rose. She looked back at the older woman.
“Tell me when you can.”
“Until the ridge,” Ashaun said. “I’ll walk with you until the ridge. If you still want me there.”
“I don’t know whether want is the word.”
“It seldom is.”
They left the question there. It was an arrangement short enough for both women to look at directly.
The next morning the channel had fallen below the lower step. Chaska tested the skiff empty, then with their cargo. The seam stayed tight. She chose to walk Lilt along the bank rather than put the harness over the healing cut.
Ashaun had a path in mind: north along the feeder, then west of the old bridge where the banks rose. She took her own pack and the wrapped dagger. Ysabet did not offer to carry either.
They moved out in a strange little procession: Chaska and the broad sandray on the higher grass, Ashaun ahead among the reeds, Ysabet in the skiff with a basket, a box, and a pole she had at last stopped trying to plant in bottomless mud.
Behind them the shrine’s empty bell frame stood over the water. No one rang it for their leaving.