The earth against Kezra Venn’s ribs smelled of cold river silt, crushed dry thistle. The sour, metal tang of unwashed winter pugging clay.
She lay prone in the narrow drainage hollow behind the north overlook wall of the occupied cart yard, her chin resting on the wet sheepskin cuff of her sleeve. Beside her, Fellis Dain barely breathed. His breath came through his teeth in tiny, controlled wisps that drifted into the dark nettles without sound. Every five heartbeats, his left knuckles pressed lightly against the meat of Kezra’s right forearm—one tap for silence, two taps for a shift in weight—translating the world she couldn’t hear into steady tactile numbers.
Through the soles of her stockinged feet and the flat plate of her chest bone, Kezra felt the dull, rhythmic impact of iron-shod soles striking flat stone slabs on the other side of the mortared wall. One of Captain Hest Vale’s guard post infantrymen was pacing the yard between the taken away pottery wagons and the coal fire bowl. He walked with the heavy, unrushed gait of a man who believed the night was entirely his. Six paces south toward the yard gate, a pause where an iron buckle clicked faintly against a sword sheath, then six paces north toward the retaining wall.
