Dusk settled over the upper charcoal bench, painting the pale limestone crags in deep violet and charcoal gray. Between the two women and the stranger, the five paces of needle-strewn clearing felt wider than a mountain canyon.
Kezra Venn opened her mouth to speak, the smooth, comforting lie of an independent merchant land-mapper resting on her lips.
Before a single false syllable could leave her throat, a firm hand touched her right elbow.
It was Yseld. The route finder didn’t shove Kezra aside or pull her back. She simply placed two calloused fingers against the cloth of Kezra’s coat, a silent, clear command to yield the ground.
Yseld stepped forward into the clear space between the cart and the northern firebreak ditch. She was fully exposed, well within striking range of a drawn woodsman’s knife.
Slowly, deliberately, without a single hurried motion that might provoke an attack, Yseld reversed her grip on the ash spear. She turned the steel blade toward the sky and drove the heavy iron butt spike straight down into the black charcoal turf. The iron seated itself with a dull, final thunk, standing upright like a land-mapper’s stake two paces in front of her boots.
Then Yseld stepped a full pace back from the weapon. She spread her arms wide. She opened her empty hands toward the woodsman, her palms flat and unguarded in the fading light.
