The stepped path dropping from the southern gallery lip into the basin floor had not been cut for pack mules or two-wheeled carts. It was a narrow, terraced stair of dark grey rock slabs, each riser shimmed with flat slate wedges and packed behind with crushed gravel so that autumn snowmelt drained across the stone without scouring out the thin topsoil. Adra Pike led the way with her iron pruning hook resting easily across her left forearm, her dark wool skirts gathered half an inch above her heavy mountain boot tops by a split-hide cord. She walked with the balanced, unrushed gait of someone who measured distance in planting rows and potato yields rather than military leagues.
Kezra Venn followed right away behind her, her right hand hooked securely into the leather shoulder strap of Yseld Arken’s pack frame. Her boots found the rhythm of the grade. But every third step sent a dull, throbbing tremor through the deep tendon above her left kneecap. It was the physical cost of yesterday’s Quarter exchange. The body bill for having pulled two hundred and fifty-six paces of living mountain foundation across the divide and seated it into Coldwork Bench. Her left ear buzzed with a flat, metal hiss. It caught only the scrape of nailed boots on stone and the loudest exhalations of the wind. Meanwhile, her good right ear took in the whole living sound landscape of the valley opening beneath them like an unfolding map.
