The old court was empty when they passed it.
Near-the-Cold-Ridge’s departure had left wet hollows, grazed mats, and the broad marks of bearing limbs in the ground. The little human station stood above them with its temporary header packed away. Jalem’s assistant had closed the outgoing throat and left the current route notice on the public board.
The body had reached the eastern feeding ground that morning.
Ten days for the eighteen-kilometer journey, with its slow steps and long pauses. The crown’s arrival had not meant the rear body was already settled. The keepers had waited until the final bearing limbs completed their stage before marking the former crossing open again.
Sera read the notice, then continued east.
It was day fifteen hundred and sixty-one. She traveled with Kesh, Lori, a local guide, and two pack animals carrying the small comparison machine, known water, ordinary field supplies, and food for the intervals between shelters. Voss kept the Bracken clinic with the trained assistants. Lori’s culture bath remained with the workshop keepers who had already operated it without her.
Nobody had left an essential job dependent on a visitor being in two places at once.
The first day’s walk ended at the ridge shelter before the new feeding ground. Water waited in the inspected cistern. The guide bought the marked fodder from the keeper’s stock, and the party slept while the animals ate under a sound roof.
