Up the western switchback trail came the people the Aperture Court had once written off as discarded scrap.
Leading the column with a heavy ash staff in one hand and the tow-rope of a loaded wooden sledge over her broad shoulder was Mother Renn, her grey wool cloak powdered with trail snow and her face ruddy from the three-hour climb up from the timberline waystation. Behind her pulled twenty-eight-year-old Pera and the three other freed hospice testers from Ash Reed—Maren, Tov, and Vey, the first four testers rescued before the mountain climb—each of them hauling pine-pitch fire bowls, bundled wool blankets, iron kettles, and four light birch-frame litters.
The four earlier testers had been strictly forbidden to use martial training during their recovery. Even so, they had insisted on walking up the western trail on ordinary legs to carry blankets and firewood for the seven brothers and sisters still left on the summit.
“Set the wind-screens along the northern rim first!” Mother Renn called out in her deep, gravelly matron’s voice before her boots had even cleared the top step of the stone basin. Her sharp eyes took in the twenty-foot black bronze pillar, the seven occupied couches, the slumped figures of Chief Examiner Vaska and Steward Osen. The blistered welt on Seyun’s right forearm in a single sweep. “Maren, Tov—get those two pine-pitch fire bowls lit between the couches so Healer Mina’s fingers don’t stiffen in the wind! Pera, bring the broth kettle and the warm salt cloths to…
