The morning sun didn’t rise above the Hanging Bastion of Cloud-Rest. It broke beneath it.
Through the gaps in the fractured flat stone slabs of the eastern terrace, four thousand feet of rolling, copper-tinted mist burned with cold orange light. The sheer granite stone props of the mountain fell straight down into the gulf, their fluted grooves slick with black ice.
Ren Vale knelt by the low outer edge low roof wall, his boots braced against a dry-stone retaining wall. He had spent three hours scouring the frost from the flat stone slabs with the flat edge of his iron trowel. He scraped away dead moss and lichen to expose the underlying bed-joints. His knees were numb through his wool trousers. The cold salt water in his canteen had frozen into a thick, slushy paste that bit his throat with every swallow.
Beside him, Mira sat on an upturned wicker salt-basket. Her charcoal shawls were drawn tightly around her shoulders, the collar pinned high to hide the smoky soft glow of her collarbone. Her left hand held her boxwood embroidery hoop, but her fingers were still. Her gaze was locked on the western sky-lane. There, the clouds formed a smooth, unbroken floor of white wool.
