The horn lantern was hooded with a circle of thick wool felt. It cast only a pale, thumb-sized circle of yellow light across the flat pine lid of the handcart.
In the shelter of the sheep fold, Kezra Venn sat with her knees drawn up. She ran her fingertips along the length of the woven wool ribbon Fellis had placed in her palm. The wool was thick, greasy, and stiff with sheep fat, spun from the coarse fleeces of Kilnstep’s upland flock and dyed with walnut husks, dried madder root, and copperas.
To anyone from outside the valley—to Captain Hest Vale or Marshal Krail’s clerks—it would have looked like a discarded hair tie or a broken harness trim dropped in a stable.
To Kezra, every knot was a line of ink.
“She tied it with her left hand,” Kezra whispered. Her thumb feeling the was tight, backward twist of the first bight. “She only ties with the left when she’s working over a hot kiln bench.”
“She was sitting in the back storeroom behind the clay washing vats,” Fellis said softly, leaning his shoulder against Kezra’s good right side so his breath wouldn’t disturb the light. “Talla guided me down the shale ledges without a sound, Kezra. We slipped right through the western timber adit into the lower sump. Your mother was sorting dry fir billets for the morning bake, wearing that heavy grey apron with the patched pocket where she keeps her kiln keys.”
