Davren didn’t raise his voice, nor did he strike a heroic pose against the grey backdrop of the terrace walls. He stood leaning on the carved grip of his ash stick. His left knee was locked straight inside its boiled-leather casing, his breath coming in steady, measured drafts that misted against his woolen collar.
Kezra stared at him, her fingers still resting on the corner of the rag-paper diagram. The morning wind stirred the cedar shingles of the water tank water chute. It carried the sharp, cold smell of pine needle mulch, damp ash. The faint clatter of iron spoons from the nearby workers’ sheds where steam rose from morning porridge kettles.
“Davren,” she said. Her voice dropped to a low, urgent murmur that stayed between the four of them at the table. “You have been trapped in this mountain bowl for eighteen months. You spent an entire winter lying in a draughty adit with a shattered kneecap, breathing through scarred lungs. Meanwhile, the blizzards banked drifts ten feet high against your door. We didn’t cross eighty miles of mountain scrub, dodge Cairn Host patrols, risk my hearing in Saltglass, and move a quarter of a mountain shoulder so you could play the martyr for people you barely knew two summers ago.”
