Mercy smelled different after fixed ground.
Iven noticed it before the freight cage reached the rear saddle: warm oil, wet hide, kitchen smoke, the sharp medicinal edge of the circulation works. Beneath those familiar smells lay something he had once accepted as weather. A living, tired odor rose through the gaps in the city, too large to belong to any one place.
He rested his hand on the cage rail and watched the streets come level with his eyes.
Two days had passed since the basalt lift. The ridge watch had sent a signed account with Dar, who caught them at the freight pickup carrying a new length of rope and the old traveler’s thanks for the goat. Leth and her apprentices had transferred their chest to a wagon bound for an eastern workshop. The little glass wheel had still been turning when they parted. Ruka kept them on the revised return schedule, and the freight crew found Mercy where Tavin’s relay said she would be.
Now Brin stood at the landing with a slate under one arm.
“You’re late,” he told Ruka.
“By your first estimate,” she said. “Early by your second.”
“Second was better.”
