By morning Gevren had found a wall he preferred Chaska to draw on.
It was an old door laid flat across two barrels. She accepted the change with a nod, transferred her three stakes to it, and added a fourth shape that Ysabet eventually recognized as a human being in considerable danger.
“Who is that?”
“Me.”
“Could you draw yourself somewhere else?”
“That is what the rope is for.”
Pip slept in a nest of cloth beneath the table. Its torn fold had drawn inward, leaving a dull translucent edge. The mouse’s box stood beside it, entrance facing the warm pouch. Ysabet had put fresh water within reach of the mouse and covered half the box against the kitchen light. Neither animal had moved since dawn.
She wanted to remain beside them. Instead she checked the young bird. It had eaten again and now objected when she lifted the cloth. Gevren looked almost injured by the ingratitude.
“That’s a useful objection,” she told him.
“It’s very loud.”
“Then you ought to recognize it.”
He made a grudging noise and took the sieve outside to a shaded shelf, where the bird could hear insects without being reached by moths.
Suth went with Ysabet and Chaska to the quarry ridge. Ashaun had already walked the outer path, marking retreat points with small stacks of chalk. Her marks were low enough not to invite a charge. She had removed loose stones from the narrowest passage and left the nests untouched.
“You can get from the tally shed to the old crane without crossing a run,” she said. “After that I don’t like it.”
“That is where I come down,” Chaska said.
Lilt lay on the launch shelf, skin darkening where the sun warmed her. Chaska checked the leather behind her left fin. The old harness rub had closed well; the new padding lay smooth. She ran her fingers beneath every fastening, then loosened one by a hole.
Ysabet went past them to the notch.
The wind pushed so hard against her shoulder that she leaned into it. A carved line in the old stone showed where a gutter had once carried water. Above it, half a dozen stake holes had been cut at different angles. Only three still held hollow tubes. Their lower ends were packed with chalk dust.
“These weren’t all drill guides,” Chaska said.
“No,” Suth answered. “The old quarry workers knew who slept here.”
“Did they stop for the nesting?”
“Sometimes. Other times they had to repair their equipment afterward.”
Ashaun snorted.
They tested the force with cloth strips. Chaska tied one to her wrist and held another on the end of a pole. When the pole crossed the notch, its strip snapped south; beneath the old gutter it hung north toward the orchard. Between those two currents the air circled in a pocket full of pale dust.
Ysabet put her hand into it. Warm air pressed her palm, then drew backward. The thing they needed to move was invisible and immensely heavy.
“We can’t fill the notch,” she said.
“No,” Chaska agreed. “But a board here might turn some of the flow. Those slats from the shed. If we can keep them from blowing down on a nest.”
Gevren’s proposed harness had promised one animal quiet. The actual problem now seemed to require carpentry, rope work, a small alteration to the hillside, and an understanding of birds. Ysabet wished briefly for a trade in which tools only did what their labels claimed.
They set a slat between two rocks. The wind tore it free at once. Ashaun caught it with her boot before it slid over the edge.
“Ropes on both ends,” she said.
“Two slats with a gap,” Chaska replied. “Let some through.”
They tried again. This time the cloth strip beneath the gutter lifted. From the alder ditch a thrush called, faint and startlingly near.
All three women turned.
The note disappeared when Chaska moved the board. She returned it to its earlier angle. The next call reached them clearly.
Suth smiled without speaking.
They marked the stones and took the slat down. It was only a narrow thread of air, too high to reach the orchard. But it existed.
As they descended, a drake moved beneath its overhang. The young one wheezed, then made a soft two-part croak. Ysabet stopped to listen. No torn membrane was singing for it. Its own body had produced the sound.
She returned to the house with a useful piece of information for Pip, though she had no idea how to tell it.