They dismantled Gevren’s shed after breakfast.
It was a lesser shed, he explained twice, whose roof he had meant to replace for years. Even so, watching Ashaun lever the first board free gave him the expression of a man observing surgery on a beloved relative.
“Not that one. That keeps the corner square.”
“The corner isn’t square,” Chaska said.
“It keeps it the shape it is.”
They left that board. Ysabet hauled nails with her left hand, using a block beneath the pincers to spare her wrist. Her right hand held loose cloth against the timber but could not manage the pull. Once, absorbed in the work, she tried. Pain shot to her elbow. She put the tool down before anyone had to remind her.
The recovered slats became a pair of short wind fences. Chaska left spaces between them and lashed each to a crossed support. Ashaun shaved the splintered ends. Suth sorted cord, discarding lengths that looked perfectly adequate until they snapped under her testing pull.
Gevren watched the rubbish pile grow. “I’ve climbed on that rope.”
“Yes,” Suth said. “You were fortunate.”
Ysabet checked Pip between loads. It had eaten a little clay and wanted more. The raw fold stayed quiet when it swallowed, so she offered a second piece. It took that, turned it in its jaw, and laid the wet stone on the cloth.
“All right.”
It lifted a foot toward her right hand. She offered it. The bond gave her a faint pressure, then the sensation of something repeatedly stopping at an edge. She could not tell whether Pip was remembering the drake or discovering the discomfort of swallowing.
She sat for a while. Work continued outside. A hammer missed a nail and Gevren said a word she had not yet heard him use.
Chaska appeared in the doorway. “Can I take the small line?”
“What for?”
“To measure the gap. Not to hang from.”
Ysabet heard the answer to the question she had actually meant and was ashamed enough to smile. “Yes.”
After lunch they carried the fences up the ridge. Suth walked rather than rode. Her elk took the bundle of boards after sniffing it thoroughly and attempting to eat a corner. At the top they unloaded everything before the smell of a drake persuaded it to put greater distance between its legs and the quarry.
The first fence stood securely. The second needed an anchor where no peg could be driven.
Suth laid her cloak over a crack. Moss strands crept into it, slowly, searching rather than springing to life at her command. She poured a cup of water beside them. For a long time nothing seemed to happen. Chaska worked on the first lashing while Ysabet held the crossed support upright.
At last a white root appeared on the far side of a stone.
Suth caught it between finger and thumb. Her face had gone gray about the mouth.
“Cord,” she said.
Ashaun handed it over. The root was thick as a child’s smallest finger. They passed the cord around it twice and tested the pull. The root held; the cloak shifted on Suth’s shoulders.
“That will do,” she said.
Ysabet crouched near her. “How long can you keep it?”
“Long enough to tie the second line to a proper rock.”
They did so quickly. Once the weight transferred, Suth pinched the root where it joined the cloth. Its end went limp. She folded it beneath the hem and drank the rest of her water.
Nobody asked her to make another.
By afternoon the wind fences stood above the old gutter. The air beneath them no longer curled uselessly in the dust pocket. A thin current ran toward the orchard, smelling faintly of alder leaves.
The drakes did not settle. A large one began nosing at the base of the nearest support. Chaska wanted to lower the stakes immediately, before the wind changed. Ashaun looked at the lengthening shadows across the quarry floor.
“We stop now,” she said.
“We have an hour.”
“We have no retreat in that dark strip. Look.”
Chaska looked. In shadow the pale drake almost vanished against the stone. Its charge would be invisible until it reached them.
She untied the lowering line.
They left the wind fences and took the loose tools home. Gevren met them under the trees with the sieve in both hands. The bird had perched on its rim. Its injured wing hung low, but it balanced with its tail and looked at the world with fierce disgust.
“Don’t cheer,” Ysabet said, seeing his face.
He swallowed the shout.
The bird stepped backward into its nest and stole a grub from the dish.