The limestone dust in the main gallery of the quarry shelter smelled of damp lime and ancient river beds. Two oil lanterns hung from iron pitons driven into the dry-stone wall. It cast amber arcs across the two recovered pottery wagons. Between the heavy ash wheels, straw-packed crates of glazed tableware and salt-fired mixing bowls sat stacked three deep against the rock, cold and undamaged.
Around the hewn table, thirty householders leaned forward on cedar tubs, their voices flattening against the low ceiling. Because of the deadened low frequencies in her left ear—the cottony weight left behind by the shear wave in Saltglass—Kezra kept her right side angled toward the room. A quarryman speaking from her left reached her only as a muffled shaking through her boots. Angled slightly north, the clear consonants carried to her sound ear.
Fellis Dain sat off her right elbow, shoulders squared toward her good side, hands busy paring thin pine splints with his draw-knife. Beside him, Paxa Sel had opened her field ledger, her pencil ticking down columns of dry stores.
“We used a four-pace stair this morning because it was handy,” Maud Venn said, her voice cutting through the scrape of benches. She stood at the head of the oak slab, her sleeves rolled past her forearms, clay dust graying the skin around her wrists. “It was handy, and it bought our dishes back. It sent four Host troopers trotting down the road to find their captain. But that stair is done. My…
