Osha gave the two-note whistle before she let Edris bring his wooden crutch around the wet limestone rib.
A moment later, old Siv lifted his grey-muzzled head from the steam above the Quiet Spring and let out a low, single huff through his nostrils. He did not bark. Behind him, Tern and Moth stayed where Kiv had stationed them on the middle shelf, their iron-dark shoulders planted as a calm living fence between a basket of blind reed-crabs and three young bristle-backed burrowers that kept trying to dig under the crab trough.
“Edris Keth,” Edris said aloud into the cleft, keeping his voice low and leaving off his temple title as he had promised Ysabet at the lower fork. His left leg was bound straight from thigh to ankle between two split staves of pine and a strip of grey wool. Sweat ran down the crease beside his mouth when he shifted his weight onto his sound right foot. “Only Osha and myself.”
Chaska stepped out from behind a curtain of pale hanging roots with a piece of wet chalk in her right hand. Her left arm was bound tight against her ribs in a canvas sling that kept her injured left shoulder from taking any pull. She looked from Osha’s mud-streaked hem to the splint on the precentor’s leg, then spat a bit of limestone grit onto the gravel.
