The sheep-pen grain drain had been cut wide enough for a winter runoff spate or a bent-backed smuggler carrying a sack of barley, and no wider. Whoever was dragging themselves up the last twelve paces of wet fieldstone from the mine side of the hill was doing it by main spite and bruised elbows.
Out in the lower yard, cold late-morning mist hung over the elderberry scrub and the low stone wall of Bristle’s pen. The blind rubble hound was on all three legs now, its heavy slate chest pressed against the pen bars and the iron masonry pins along its spine bristling upright as it tracked the ragged, whistling breath echoing up the stone throat of the culvert.
“Stay back from the lip, Tessa,” Sella Rusk ordered in a low, clipped voice.
She stood three paces in front of the iron drain grate with her repaired buckler—iron dripping-pan patch and all—angled across her chest and her short sword loose in its scabbard. Tessa Dene did not step back so much as half a boot-length; she planted her heels on the wet flagstones beside Sella’s left shoulder, her salvage bread knife drawn and held low against her wool apron, while Fen waited under the kitchen porch with his canvas bandage roll and Prit perched on the horse-trough rim clutching his slate.
