Paxa Sel rose from the hearthstone, picked up her wooden test pipe and her ink-horn. Then she stepped out through the shelter doorway onto the sunlit rock terrace. Kezra Venn followed half a pace behind her. She held the three sheets of sworn testimony in her hand. Meanwhile, Fellis Dain walked to the low roof wall and stood with his back braced against the limestone wall. His braced left arm was held rigid.
Bran the courier didn’t follow them. He remained by the fire, watching through the low doorway with hard, uncompromising eyes.
Yseld Arken didn’t turn her head as their boots scraped across the frost-crusted flags. She sat with her elbows resting on her knees, her calloused fingers clasped loosely between her boots, her gaze fixed on the blue, hazy emptiness of the southern canyon three thousand feet below.
Paxa didn’t begin with an accusation, nor did she raise her voice to compete with the wind. She sat down on an upturned wooden water cask three paces from Yseld. She set her ink-horn on the stone, and smoothed Corvan’s settling across her knee.
“Yseld Arken,” Paxa said. Her tone carrying the was cold, level clarity of a physician reading a mortality register. “You have heard Bran’s arrival. You know what’s written on these three sheets.”
