Before Ulvan Dret could answer Kezra’s question, the hemp safety line at Kezra’s waist gave two short, deliberate twitches. A moment later, Paxa Sel stepped out from the shadowed recess behind the rock lip and came to stand half a pace to Kezra’s left—covering Kezra’s deaf side while keeping her own hands empty and visible outside her grey wool cloak.
Up on the broken low roof wall of the service court, one of Captain Hest Vale’s orderlies shifted his crossbow an inch. But Hest raised two gloved fingers to hold him still. A middle-aged healer carrying a canvas medical satchel posed no threat to eighteen armed soldiers. Ulvan himself merely inclined his felt cap in polite acknowledgment.
Paxa didn’t return the bow. She stood with her feet set wide against the cold gorge draught. She looked at Ulvan Dret the way she looked at quarrymen who came into Kilnstep after a winter rockfall insisting they only had a bruised rib. She had spent twenty years setting bones, splinting shattered limbs, and listening to the rattle of damaged lungs in mining camps across three valleys. To her eyes, a man’s stance was a test ledger that couldn’t be falsified by a confident smile or a neat uniform.
