Dusk fell over Alderfast with the sudden, sharp chill characteristic of high mountain basins. Outside the western tool house, the sky through the open shutter shifted from pale slate-blue to a deep, bruised violet. Meanwhile, the long shadows of the eastern terrace walls lengthened across the turnip patches and drainage water chutes below. Down in the basin, the small fires of the lower cottages were beginning to pinprick the dusk with yellow light, each plume of blue smoke rising straight toward the darkening limestone crags.
Paxa and Fellis had packed their tools. Then they stepped out twenty minutes earlier, heading down the stepped terrace path to share the evening meal at Adra Pike’s communal hearth. They had offered to bring back two wooden bowls of barley broth and roasted roots. That left Kezra and Davren alone in the quiet room. A single animal fat candle, stuck in a hollowed limestone cup on the corner of the worktable, provided the only light. Its yellow flame flickered slightly in the draft from the door.
Kezra sat on the edge of the pine table, her boots swinging inches above the earthen floor. Davren remained standing near the window. He leaned lightly on his ash stick, his re-braced left leg bearing weight without the painful tremor that had plagued him for eleven months. But his eyes never left her face, fixed with troubled intensity on the left side of her jaw.
