The midnight watch on Day 80 was freezing, dry, and fully clear. High above the Needlehouse crags, the winter stars burned in brilliant, diamond-hard clusters. Their light reflected off the pale frost that rimmed the limestone low roof wall.
Kezra Venn sat on a dry wool blanket just inside the shelter entrance, her coat buttoned to the chin, her right ear turned toward the vast, silent drop of the southern canyon. Across the hearth, on the far side of the cold ashes, Yseld Arken lay asleep in her bedroll, her weapons still leaning against the far wall by the door—an arrangement Yseld herself had insisted upon until the morning vote was finished.
Beside Kezra, sitting on a low cedar keg with his back braced against the doorpost, sat Fellis Dain.
The nineteen-year-old rigger was awake, his dark eyes watching the stars through the doorway. In his uninjured right hand, he held a three-foot length of braided hemp cord, looping the fibers around the heel of his trail boot in the dark with practiced, rhythmic movements. Over and under, twist the bight, tuck the tail: a clean, tight clove hitch, tied with a single hand in less than five seconds.
“You’re getting fast with that right hand,” Kezra whispered. She kept her voice low so as not to wake Paxa in the rear nook.
