The marker station had a red shutter for road danger and a black one for bad air. Ruka opened the red before she let anyone sit down.
They had walked since first light through stone fins still holding the night’s cold. Iven’s scratched knuckles had dried cleanly beneath a strip of cloth. Thessa had checked them over breakfast with the brisk competence of someone who had spent years far from clinics. She found no puncture beneath the shallow cuts and no reason for him to keep inspecting them between steps.
At the marker, Nessa copied the shelter drawing onto a signal sheet while Ruka sent the location code. Kesh added a description of the ridge-sail, its resting hollow and the absence of any young she had seen. She underlined seen. The keeper, a man with one milky eye, read the account and went outside to look north.
“Caravan’s due in two days,” he said. “They use that roof if rain comes.”
“Tell them not to,” Iven said.
“I will. You leave the sample?”
“Kesh decides.”
She kept a small portion sealed for Sera and left the rest in the keeper’s cool cupboard. He gave her a receipt on the reverse of an old feed invoice. Nessa stayed beside him while he sent the warning onward. By the time they drank their first cup of hot water, the red shutter on the next distant station had answered.
