A heavy, choking silence hung over the outer terrace of the Needlehouse shelter. It was broken only by the sharp, metal snap of the courier’s pennon fluttering in the cold subalpine draft.
Kezra Venn stood with her fists clenched inside her coat pockets, her breath misting white in the winter air, her heart pounding with a fierce, burning mixture of grief and backstabbing. Yseld had been her guide, her teacher, the woman who had held the rope. Just then, the mountain fell away beneath her boots. To know that the hands holding that rope had once turned a key on a water cask. Meanwhile, a child died was a wound that cut straight to the bone.
“If you want to atone for those forty-two people, Yseld,” Kezra said, her voice shaking with an edge of reckless, punitive anger she had never felt before, “you can take the lone rear-guard position on the raised stone road when Hest Vale’s patrol arrives. You can stand on that open ridge with your spear, hold the flank until we clear the shoulder, and prove to Joric Thane that you have changed your coat.”
Yseld looked up, her weathered face grey beneath its wind-burn. She met Kezra’s eyes, swallowed hard, and gave a slow, solemn nod of submission.
