Dawn of the ninth day—the third of seven dawns on Daro Kesh’s deeper Bronze echo—rose clear and biting cold over the valley floor. That turned the breath of the grey pack-mule into white plumes by the lower garden gate. In the courtyard of the black-roof school, the light wooden supply cart that Daro and nineteen-year-old Kes had greased and heavy the last evening stood loaded with twelve bulky burlap sacks of dried bitter reed, four crates of split birch, and two heavy clay jars of salted cabbage.
Inside the front doorway, Archivist Vel stood with his oiled-leather satchel strapped securely across his chest and a heavy oak-heavy strongbox resting on the pine table beside him. Inside that strongbox lay the six original silver-birch leaves of the Archive of Quiet Names. Meanwhile, the two waterproof oilskin packets containing the plain-text linen transcriptions and the cipher key were sewn into the linings of two separate coats—one worn by Vel himself, and the other worn by nineteen-year-old Kes.
Vel had first learned the last night that he wouldn’t be climbing onto the supply cart for the journey to the Hollow Summit. Then, the fifty-eight-year-old scholar had protested that his place was beside the records he had spent his career decoding. It had taken both Seyun and Daro Kesh to show him why staying behind was the most vital post in the entire operation.
