Through the broken granite arch of the Seventh Milestone hospice, the wind off the northern gorge funneled in low, irregular gusts that rattled the dry ice crusts clinging to the inside stonework. Forty years ago, before the Aperture Court restricted high-sky foot traffic to licensed supply trains, winter pilgrims and salt-packers had sheltered beneath these vaulted stone ribs on their way across the divide. Now two-thirds of the roof had caved into the side ravine. That left only a three-walled stone nook at the rear where an ancient hearth-top door beam kept the snow out of a ten-foot circle of flat stone slabs.
Hall Mistress Soran stood just inside the wind-shadow of that top door beam. She had placed a single shuttered horn lantern on a chest-high stone ledge-stone to her left, angling its brass slide so the narrow beam of yellow light fell squarely across the faces of anyone stepping over the threshold while leaving the outer arch dark against ridge-top watchers. The northern seal expedition twenty winters ago had shattered the bones of her inner ears. Because of that, the mistress of White Heron Hall heard the world only as a distant, underwater shaking through her boots and spear shaft. She read speech by the shape of lips, the tension of a throat, and the angle of a jaw.
