Down in the lower vault, at the foot of the spiral stair, Mother Renn rose slowly from her wooden stool beside Senn’s third bed, wiped her wrinkled hands on her herb-stained apron, and walked quietly to the open bronze doorway below Seyun’s boots.
Seyun sat on the third tread near the top of the shaft. He looked down through the spiral curve of the bronze steps and saw the old woman standing at the bottom threshold, her gray head bowed as she listened up the pipe.
Above him in the star-lit dome, Nara Soth heard the quiet shuffle of the herb-woman’s cloth shoes at the bottom of the stair.
“You’re listening down there by the lower pipe rim, Renn,” Nara Soth called down gently, her rough voice losing every trace of its sharp edge as she spoke to the old woman twenty feet below. “If you want me to skip the twenty-second autumn before the fire, say the word and I’ll pass over it.”
From the bottom of the spiral stair, Mother Renn’s voice rose clear and steady up the hollow bronze column.
“Don’t pass over a word of it, Lady Nara,” Mother Renn called back up the shaft, her hands clasped together over her apron. “The boy on the stairs has an honest book open on his knee. My Aven’s name has been left out of the abbey rolls for twenty-two winters. Let him write it down.”
