The fire was small. It was built from dried cedar tool-shavings and three pine wedges salvaged from a broken wheelbarrow.
It burned with little smoke, the grey draft curling upward into a narrow fissure in the amethyst ceiling that drew air like a chimney pipe. Beside the embers, Mira slept. She was wrapped in three layers of dry burlap sacks, her head resting on a folded canvas pack. Her breathing was steady, the rhythmic, musical chime in her chest now a gentle pulse that rose. Then she fell with each heartbeat.
Ren Vale sat cross-legged on the granite floor, his back resting against a smooth boulder. His left arm lay motionless across his lap, wrapped in the rigid resin-coated horn splint. Every time he shifted his shoulders, a dull thrum rang through his collarbone, reminding him of the hair-thin line separating his living frame from shattered stone.
Opposite him, Artificer Ren was working by the light of a single animal fat candle.
The older man had unrolled his tool-kit again, but this time he wasn’t cutting quartz. He was working with leather, horn, and copper wire. He used a curved cobbler’s knife. He shaved thick strips of boiled elk-hide, beveling the edges with smooth, practiced strokes of his thumb. Beside him lay a pile of dense sheep’s wool shears, three curved plates of ram’s horn, and a roll of waxed hemp cord.
