The morning frost had turned the Splitflint courtyard into a sheet of grey, brittle glass.
Kezra stood by the timber water-trough near the western gate. She watched the steam rise in white plumes from the nostrils of Torren’s two pack mules. The beasts were short-legged upland stock, broad across the rump and shaggy with their first winter coats. Their pack-saddles were empty save for four straw-stuffed willow panniers and two heavy kegs of coarse rock salt purchased from the eastern evaporators.
Torren was greasing the axle-pins of his small hand-barrow with a rag soaked in bacon fat. His hands were thick and dark, scarred across the knuckles from forty years of handling heavy clay crocks and hot kiln shelves. He heard Kezra’s iron-shod staff click against the flat stone slabs. Then, he wiped his palms on the thighs of his sheepskin coat and straightened up with a slow creak in his hips.
“I saw your face by the hearth last night, Kezra Venn,” the old peddler said, his voice as rough as unwashed marl. “I thought I was dreaming after twelve hours on the scree. What’s Maud Venn’s daughter doing forty miles from the kiln yard, carrying an iron-tipped survey staff like a highland scout?”
