The heat beneath the canvas awning seemed to drop five degrees. Kezra Venn turned to the second page of Davren’s letter.
The handwriting on this sheet was looser, written with a hurried, defensive carelessness that Kezra recognized with sudden, painful clarity. It was the exact handwriting Davren had used at age seventeen. Just then, he had taken Maud’s best clay-hauling mule into the upper hills without permission and returned two days late with three broken panniers and a pocketful of silver ore samples.
Kezra rested her palm flat against the ash wood of the tailboard and read aloud:
‘I came out of Alderfast through the northern chimney squeeze on the twelfth of the Eighth Month, with three young miners who carried sixty pounds of high-grade lead ore on pack frames.
‘We reached Joric Thane’s station in Saltglass after six days of night marching. I sold my brass pocket compass to a traveling watchmaker for eight silver thalers, used the money to purchase forty pounds of dried beans, two coils of splint wire, and three jars of fever bark from the caravan store. Then it left my complete-triangle debt token with Master Thane to cover the balance.
‘The miners and I are preparing to climb back through the chimney tomorrow morning.
