Inside the command wagon, the dry glare of the quarry gave way to a dim, amber stillness that smelled of old sheepskin, tobacco leaf, and wet hemp. Joric Thane had hung double thicknesses of coarse river burlap across the windward slats. It soaked them with two buckets of salty well water drawn from the deep quarry sump. As the hot mountain breeze dragged through the sodden cloth, the air inside dropped ten degrees. It smelled richly of river silt, cool dampness, and evaporated salt.
Kezra sat on a low oak sea-chest bound with copper straps, her boots resting flat on the scrubbed pine floorboards. Her fingers were still stained with lampblack from the four-stage site clearance protocol she had written at the frame stand table. But her mind was entirely removed from chalk lines and burrow chimney pipes.
Across the narrow center aisle, Joric knelt before an iron-banded hickory strongbox wedged securely beneath his bunk frame. He took an iron key from a braided rawhide cord around his neck, fitted it into the brass escutcheon. Then he turned it with a clean, heavy click that echoed inside the wagon cab.
“Fourteen months ago,” Joric began, his voice dropping into the quiet, steady, unrushed pace of a man who measured time by seasonal freight runs rather than days of the week, “the southern passes were already getting difficult. The Cairn Host had burned two toll gates down in the valley. The high snows in the Notch hadn’t cleared until late summer…
