The sun was an hour above the eastern ridges when Kezra Venn laid her working route journal flat across the timber cross-tree of the mule’s pack frame.
The three companions gathered around her in the dry gravel. Paxa Sel with her medical satchel slung across her chest. Fellis Dain with his uncoiled measuring cord looped over his good left shoulder. And Yseld Arken leaning on her scarred ash climbing staff, her bandaged left arm resting quietly in its sling.
Half a mile to the north, the two Cairn Host scouts sat their horses on the skyline, their dark silhouettes motionless against the pale fiery bluffs. They watched the conference through their field glasses.
Kezra dipped her brass reed-pen into the small horn inkpot she had wedged into a knot-hole in the pack frame.
“We’re about to enter the territory of the Saltglass syndicates,” Kezra said. Her voice carried clearly in the quiet morning air. “We’re carrying eight completed circuits, seven live addresses, and an active military patrol behind our heels. Before we meet Joric Thane, and before we ever offer a travel tag to another human being, I want our practice locked in ink.”
She looked at Paxa, whose dark eyes watched the pen with uncompromising severity.
