Night had settled fully over the uplands, turning the air-flow shafts into squares of pure indigo. Inside the quarry gallery, the chill had begun to seep up through the limestone floor, prompting several weavers to spread sheepskin pelts across the benches. The smell of very thirsty barley and boiled turnips from the evening ration drifted from the hearth nook. But around the central lantern table, nobody was eating.
“Nobody is faulting you, Kezra,” said Master Kael, a broad-shouldered potter who fired the yellow-slip baking dishes in the lower kiln. He stood with his thumbs hooked into his leather belt, his face earnest under the yellow animal fat light. “You did what any sensible wagon-master would have done. Pots can be thrown again once the clay thaws in spring. Bones don’t mend so cleanly. If my apprentice had been hauling that trace and caught an iron bolt through the shoulder, what good would forty baking crocks have been to his mother?”
“Aye,” echoed the widow Marra from the second bench. She nodded vigorously so the pewter pin in her wool headcloth glinted. Her own three crates of glazed table-bowls sat safe and unbroken behind the wagon wheel. “The Host took what they took because they’re thieving ruffians in iron coats. We should be thanking the girl for getting two wagons under cover before the gate slammed. It’s a mercy we have any stock left to take to market at all.”
