The afternoon wind off the western crags smelled of damp granite. From the parapet, Noll watched Arda Dorn ascend the switchbacks. She wore no cuirass, no gilded gorget, and no sword belt. Her plain wool tunic was greyed at the cuffs, and her walking boots were caked with valley clay. Her right hip dipped with an unaccustomed lightness; the heavy service broadsword had been left on Fen’s table at the river aid station.
“She moves like someone who dropped a sack of wet flour into a millrace,” Sella Rusk said from the timber rail. “Take forged steel off a soldier’s hip, and they lean sideways until their ankles remember how to stand level.”
“She carries enough paperwork in her head to balance any boots,” Noll said, his basalt throat rumbling low. “Open the culvert gate, Sella. She comes as an invited guest.”
Prit was waiting on the flags of the lower terrace. The bone-imp had his white slate tucked under his left elbow, three stubs of chalk in the leather band of his apron, and a fresh basin of spring water set upon a bench. When Dorn stepped across the scored threshold kerb, she paused. Her eyes swept the murder-holes, the drop-bar housings, and the counterweighted levers that Tessa had pinned into the stone jambs that morning.
