Kezra reached deep into the inner breast pocket of her canvas survey coat, past the waxed oilcloth wrapping of her spare transit leads. Her fingers closed around the cold, rounded disc she had carried across eighty miles of contested mountain country. She pulled it out and laid it flat on the scarred pine worktable between them.
The brass token hit the wood with a dull, heavy chink that rang in the quiet room. It was an ordinary drover’s marker from Joric Thane’s freight lines. Two inches across, stamped on one side with the three-cairn emblem of the trade guild, and scratched on the reverse with crude, hurried strokes of a hardened point. Near the top of the scratched face was Davren’s distinctive split triangle, its base leg shortened and cocked at a sharp angle. Below it, gouged into the dull yellow brass with the point of an iron awl, were four lines of text:
Alderfast basin reached. Northern pass pinched by host. Delay brief. Following dry road home within a fortnight. Tell Mother the kiln holds.
Davren looked down at the brass disc. His eyes tracked the jagged letters he had cut months ago under a high alpine sky. The defensive hardness in his face seemed to crumble, replaced by a weary, hollow tiredness that sank deep into the lines around his mouth. He didn’t reach out to touch the token. He kept his hands flat on the edge of the sleeping pallet, his scarred left knee resting stiffly on…
