Late in the afternoon on Day Ninety-Three, before the supper fires were lit in the communal kitchen, Davren insisted on walking down to the southern gallery mouth. He wanted to see with his own eyes where the dark hard speckled granite shoulder that had crushed his knee eleven months ago had once stood.
Paxa Sel gave her medical clearance on one strict condition. Davren was not to carry a pack. He was to stop every fifty paces to rest his heel and let his scarred lung catch its wind. Kezra walked beside him, matching her stride to the slow, deliberate swing-and-plant of his re-braced left leg. She kept her hands free at her sides, resisting the protective instinct to grab his elbow whenever his boot slipped slightly on the loose shale thin wedges of the stepped terrace path.
The walk from the middle terraces to the southern notch was barely four hundred paces. But it dropped through three hundred feet of upright switchbacks. Davren moved with focused, stubborn concentration, planting the iron metal ring of his ash stick firmly into the dark grey rock gravel before advancing his sound right boot. The newly adjusted iron brace didn’t twist his kneecap inward. The weight traveled cleanly from the padded leather thigh cuff straight down into the built-up heel. That let him go down the grade without the painful grimace that had marked his steps in the yard.
