At the eastern mouth, someone had hung Rennit’s kettle from a tree.
He stopped beneath it and stared.
Safa sat on a stone beside the path, eating bread. Behind her, six mules grazed inside a temporary rope boundary. Their packs had been unloaded beneath a lean-to. The oldest mule looked as though the journey around the hill had confirmed every poor opinion it held of human planning.
“You left it with the bulk stores,” Safa told Rennit.
“I thought it was in my bag.”
“It was. I took it out before someone tried to carry the kitchen through a hot tunnel.”
“Then why is it in a tree?”
“So you’d notice.”
