From the dark recess behind Kezra Venn, a pair of greased leather climbing boots scraped softly against the limestone floor. A shadow detached itself from the overhang. Yseld Arken stepped out onto the open sunlit shelf.
She carried her wire-bound hooked climbing staff horizontally across her forearms, keeping both palms flat and open in plain sight of Captain Hest Vale on the low roof wall above. Her grey-green wool tunic was weathered to the color of dry lichen, its collar pinned with a plain bone toggle rather than the brass service lion of the Cairn Host she had worn five years ago. On her left temple, a pale, narrow scar ran through her cropped hair. The mark of a sentry’s iron buckle from the night she had cut four pack mules off the picket line and deserted into the bitter salt waste.
Ulvan Dret didn’t reach for his sounding rods or shout for the archers. His grey eyes widened by a fraction of an inch. His jaw set hard as he looked at the woman standing three paces behind Kezra’s right shoulder.
“Senior Route Guide Arken,” Ulvan said. His deep dropped into the clipped, formal register of a company staff review. “When Captain Durr returned to Stonewake five years ago, his report stated that you had died of heat stroke in the Great Salt Wash while attempting to recover runaway drovers.”
