For three long heartbeats, nobody in the tool house yard moved. The high mountain wind gusted across the western shelf, rattling the dry larch needles clinging to the roof edges and stirring the bitter scent of boiled yarrow and rendered animal fat from the drying racks. But between Kezra and the low timber doorway the air seemed to freeze into total, unbending stillness.
Davren stood framed by the dark, rough-hewn top door beam, his dark shape sharp and angular against the inside gloom of the tool room. He was twenty-one now. But the eighteen months that had elapsed since he walked out through Kilnstep’s pasture gate had carved away every vestige of the boyish softness Kezra carried in her memory. His jawline was lean and hard as chipped chert, his cheekbones jutting high beneath skin weathered to the dull color of cured alder bark. His dark brown hair had been hacked back crookedly with a dull knife. That left uneven tufts sticking out over hollowed temples.
His left leg was wrapped from mid-thigh down to the ankle in a massive, improvised harness of boiled mule leather and hammered iron ore-cart straps. The iron bands, pitted with dark forge scale and scratched from contact with stone ribs, had been curved around the limb by cold hammering on a blacksmith’s anvil and riveted to the thick leather cuffs with flattened copper washers. Five broad brass buckles, salvaged from some forgotten draft harness, held the contraption cinched over thick grey wool leggings. The…
