Lanterns were already being lit inside the lower cottages. Seyun and Nara walked back up the stone lane from the threshing floor toward the shepherd hospice.
Daro and Kes had gone ahead to help Bel Sar stack the wooden grain frames back under the barn roof edges. Mina and Pera were carrying the medicine baskets through the side orchard gate to check on Senn’s evening chest brace shift. Above the dark shape of the mountain wall, the first stars were coming out around the pale rent of the northern sky-slit, its cold white glow glinting in the frozen wagon ruts along the street.
Seyun carried both plain ash staffs in his left hand so his bruised right knuckles could cool in the night air. Walking beside Nara he thought of the four sessions Mina had authorized for tomorrow, the eighth day of the countdown. She had slung her gray cloak over her single shoulder and used her walking staff with an easy, unrushed rhythm.
“Mina cleared me for the first morning glass an hour after sunrise tomorrow,” Seyun said as they passed the stone horse trough near the upper turn of the lane. “If we run the departing-partner set up at the seal court while Vaska spins the pressure lens on low tension, we could test whether the four-beat proof holds against the refracted planes.”
