The morning sun had burned away the last wisps of valley mist. That left the limestone shelf stark and white beneath a hard, cloudless sky. Twelve paces apart, Kezra Venn and Ulvan Dret faced each other across the chalk line they had drawn in the dust an hour ago.
Ulvan tied the leather thong around his rolled depth metal tube. Then it slid it back into the heavy wool pocket of his coat. He didn’t look angry, nor did he look defeated. His face had settled into the calm, fatalistic sobriety of an older stonemason who had warned a headstrong apprentice that a dry-stacked arch lacked a keystone, and who was now stepping back to watch the wall fall down on its own schedule.
“So be it,” Ulvan said. His deep was steady, carrying without strain across the gorge updraught. “You decline the company contract. You decline the fifty crowns of payback for Kilnstep. And you decline the safe-conduct pass for Davren.”
“I decline to become Marshal Krail’s tool,” Kezra answered, her voice ringing clear against the limestone face. “And I decline to let you buy my brother’s freedom by trading away the freedom of every other family in Alderfast.”
