On the seventh morning after the battle plan was chalked across the seal court stones, Nara Soth walked past the upper practice terrace without looking at the bronze pressure lens.
Frost still clung to the juniper roots along the switchback trail. Above the northern ridge, the pale rent in the sky hung wider than it had three mornings ago, its white edge pulsing once every few breaths like a flaw in blown glass. Up on the granite platform, Daro Kesh and Hall Mistress Soran were already setting out wooden markers for the morning proof passes. Seyun was wrapping his scarred palms in clean linen beside Mina’s medicine basket. Nobody called out to remind Nara of the schedule. She had closed the third rivalry mark beneath Seyun’s chest bone four days earlier. Then, she had taken her name off every duty roster in the valley.
She followed the smell of coal smoke and wet wool down into the lower settlement.
Only nineteen stone cottages stood along the terraced lane below the shepherd hospice, and half of them already had their shutters barred for winter departure. Ox carts and two-wheeled hand barrows crowded the frozen mud of the street. Women in heavy sheepskin vests were lashing cedar chests and bundles of dried reed bedding to the rails, while old men checked the iron tires of the wheels with wooden mallets. There was no panic in the yard—Mother Renn and Pera had spent the past two afternoons walking from door to door with…
