Pip would not come out while the boots were still moving overhead.
Ysabet stayed on her knees beside the bottom step and did not reach under the timber. Pulling a frightened creature out of a hole by force was how Miller Vennick had locked the sluice hound’s ribs sideways in the culvert. She kept her right hand flat on the damp wood, bent fingers turned slightly upward so Pip could see the pale scar across the joints, and breathed slowly enough for her shoulders to drop.
Chaska went partway up the steps and spoke to Deren in a low, flat voice. A moment later two men lifted the empty barrel over the rail and carried it away toward the smokehouse. The footsteps thinned out. Only the water kept talking under the planks.
Ashaun and Suth arrived from the lane with a sack of flat loaves. Neither asked what had happened until they had looked at the blood on the pier corner and the chalky fluid drying on the lower stage.
“The boy?” Suth asked.
“Scraped knee and a bruised shoulder,” Chaska said. “His father has him.”
Ashaun looked under the steps. Her right hand rested on the strap of the bread sack; her stone left forearm hung still against her coat. “And the shell?”
