Dawn on the forty-eighth day came cold, grey, and fully windless.
Kezra Venn followed Joric Thane across the frozen ruts of the central caravan yard. She stepped over the stiff hemp tie-lines that secured the heavy freight wagons against the night drafts. Behind her left shoulder, Yseld Arken walked with her climbing staff held vertically against her forearm, her eyes scanning the wagon drivers who were already harnessing mules at the watering troughs.
Joric’s command wagon was the largest vehicle in the Saltglass train. A broad-beamed, eight-wheeled freight carrier built of seasoned mountain larch. Its high timber sides were heavy with bolted iron slanted braces and roofed with three layers of tarred sailcloth.
Joric climbed the four iron rungs at the tailboard, pushed aside a heavy leather draft-curtain. Then it gestured for Kezra and Yseld to enter.
Inside, the air smelled of stale pipe tobacco, animal fat grease, dry ink, and the sharp, stone tang of cold iron. A single brass gimbal-lamp hung from the central ceiling rib. It cast a steady amber pool of light over a bolted oak chart table. Beneath the table, secured to the floor timbers with four heavy iron strap-bolts, sat the caravan factor’s iron strongbox. A three-hundred-pound chest of plate steel with three keyholes arranged in a triangle around a central brass dial.
