The dry storage terrace of the upper writing hall smelled of sulfur, damp wool, and the bitter almond aroma of willow-bark tea.
The waters had pulled back from the central galleries, drained through the lower drain tube gates into the dark deep-sea fissures beneath the temple. The two hundred debt-exiles had organized themselves into quiet, huddled groups in the dry cloister bays, wrapping their shivering children in tattered archival dust-cloths and sharing dry ration biscuits that Vane Vale had miraculously audited out of an old High court supply locker.
Near the center of the terrace, beside a cold iron fire bowl, Ren Vale knelt beside his sister.
Mira’s teeth were clicking together with a sound like loose glass beads. Her charcoal wool shawl was draped over a stone bench to dry. She wore only her soaked linen tunic. Her left shoulder shook wildly under the shock of the freezing plunge. But it was her right side that frightened Ren.
The smoky quartz had climbed higher. It now fully wrapped her right collar bone, stretching in a pale, many-sided ridge across the top of her chest bone. The crystal was not dormant. It was shaking with a faint, high-hum that set the water droplets on her skin dancing in tiny patterns.
