In the warm cavern at the head of the descending water chute, the group divided their loads for the last time.
Chaska stayed above in command of the diversion trench and the four temporary basins. Her injured left shoulder made climbing the wet lower ledges impossible anyway, and nobody else knew the pressure seams on the chalk map as well as she did. Kiv remained with her alongside Lilt, Siv, Tern, Moth, Corporal Vane, and young Tor to watch the sluice walls and keep the evacuation routes clear toward the upper valley.
Before strapping on her pack, Ysabet walked over to the high dry shelf beside Lilt’s folded grey wing, where the scrubbed boot-nail box sat out of the draft.
Inside the half-covered box, her original field mouse was sitting up on its haunches, holding a dry oat kernel in both front paws while its bad hind leg stuck out crookedly to one side on the clean grass. When Pip raised its nose to the rim of the box, the mouse did not flinch or drop its oat; it leaned over the wooden access strip, touched its whiskers briskly to the scar on Pip’s upper lip, and went right back to chewing.
