At an hour past midnight, the winter clouds parted above the alder ridge, flooding the frosted rows of turnips and cabbages with cold, silver-white moonlight. Inside the timber hall, the brick hearth had sunk to a bed of banked red ash. Archivist Vel snored softly under a horsehair blanket with his two linen backup copies of the Quiet Names tucked safely beneath his pillow, and nineteen-year-old Kes slept deeply on his left side near the chimney corner, his breathing even and unrushed beneath the comfrey compress.
Seyun was not asleep. Sitting propped against the wall beside the front window shutter—where he had taken the middle watch after Ilyra’s first four hours by the grain-crib—he was using the faint ember-glow to review the calendar notations along the top margin of Osen Tal’s half-burned transfer warrant. His twice-burned palms throbbed with a dull, steady heat inside Tella’s clean linen wraps, forbidding sleep whenever his wrists shifted against his knees.
Through the inch-wide crack of the window shutter, Seyun watched Daro Kesh walk down the center dirt lane of the vegetable garden and draw his heavy Bronze broadsword. The swordsman wore only his grey linen shirt and practice trousers despite the biting frost. That way, no heavy coat sleeve could hidden the posture of his shoulders and elbows.
