The subalpine sun was now high enough to cast short, dark shadows beneath their boots, drying the last traces of morning frost from the limestone shelf. Twelve paces away, Ulvan Dret shifted his weight onto his good right leg, his heavy wool coat rustling in the wind.
“Kilnstep,” Ulvan repeated, letting the name roll across his tongue like an unfamiliar inventory item from a distant supply depot. “A pottery village on the southern upland clay beds. Forty houses, three lime kilns, and communal scrub pasture.”
“You know the count,” Kezra said, her voice hard as flint. “Did your intelligence clerks give you the names of the people who live there, too? Or did they only give you the map points of the drying shed where I awakened my class?”
Ulvan let out a slow, measured sigh—the weary, office breath out of a senior judge dealing with an overzealous complainant at the end of a long tax court session.
“Captain Vale was running under direct orders from Stonewake Citadel to secure your cooperation before the autumn snows closed the high Spine passes,” Ulvan said, his tone reasonable, moderate, and entirely detached from the violence he described. “She sent an eight-man scouting calm distance to Kilnstep on Day fifty-one to determine whether you had left active defensive squares behind you. Your mother refused to allow the sergeant to inspect the kiln foundations. Then, there was a fight. A pottery cart was damaged during the pullback. An iron picket bar was driven into…
