The whetstone slipped from Yseld Arken’s fingers, clattering sharply against the dark rock flat stone slabs before rolling to a stop against the iron tire of the handcart wheel.
She didn’t bend to pick it up.
Her hands rested empty in her lap, the scarred palms turned upward toward the rock ceiling. She showed the pale, crisscrossing ridges of old rope-burns, frost-scars, and climbed falls. Her face was gray in the filtered light of the overhang. Her jaw was clenched so tightly that the tendons in her neck stood out like taut, corded hemp.
“Yes,” Yseld said. The word was ripped from her throat, flat, harsh, and utterly lifeless. “The split-tail fox was my field stamp. Third Vanguard Battalion, calm distance seven.”
Fellis Dain stopped his grease paddle mid-stroke. He remained frozen on one knee beside the axle, his fingers smeared with yellow animal fat. He stared at the guide with eyes wide with disbelief and shock.
Kezra didn’t move. She kept her Bonded Survey Notebook balanced across her knees, her right hand resting flat against the open ledger leaf, her uninjured right ear turned directly toward Yseld. Her left ear gave only that dull, hollow pulse of blood. But every muscle in her back was rigid as an iron brace.
