At noon, the theoretical argument in the seal court turned into an immediate physical crisis. Daro Kesh’s senior student Kes climbed the steps from the lower hospice with a corded wooden crate strapped high across his shoulders. Inside the crate, packed in dry reed husks, sat eight sealed clay jars of packed fever-ash decoction that Mina and Mother Renn had just finished steeping over the morning fire bowl.
A runner from the upper north watch-post had just signaled down the ridge. Three young children belonging to the two shepherd families quartered at the post. Children who had inhaled fine, freezing stone dust. Just then, the first pale blade demolished the hillside shrine four days ago. Had developed a rattling chest fever at mid-morning. Without the fever-ash decoction before the afternoon chill set in, the stone inflammation would scar their lungs permanently.
Between the seal court and the north watch-post lay a half-mile cross across an open, forty-degree slope of loose grey shale—and drifting back and forth six hundred feet above that slope was an unspent pale blade from the northern sky-slit.
Kes tightened the hemp shoulder straps of the medicine crate and walked toward the northern back gate. Then, Ilyra stepped directly across the threshold with her shortened spear held horizontally. Every protective reflex in her body rose to block him. She told Kes to set the crate on the stone. Either the delivery would wait until nightfall obscured the hillside, or else she would strap the jars to her…
