The afternoon wind on Day 115 brought fine, dry sleet that rattled against the cedar clapboards of the sick room porch like spilled sand. Inside, the hearth was banked with glowing birch coals, filling the room with a dry, pine-scented warmth. But on the covered porch outside, Davren Venn stood leaning against the rough timber railing. He watched the empty southern trail where the children’s mule train had disappeared two hours before.
His ash walking stick was planted hard into the gravel. His jaw was set in that familiar, stubborn line that Kezra had seen a hundred times across their childhood in Kilnstep whenever he was told a river was too swift to swim.
“I can do it, Paxa,” Davren said. His voice tight and shook with suppressed frustration. The physician stepped out onto the porch carrying her wooden stethoscope metal tube and a clean wool cloth. “I watched drover Bran’s carriers. They take two short paces, plant their poles, and pivot. My right leg is as strong as an oak beam. If fourteen-year-old boys can scramble down those chimneys, a grown man with an ash stick can haul himself through.”
Kezra sat on the wooden bench beside the porch door, cleaning the brass hinges of her field sighting compass with a drop of sweet almond oil. She didn’t speak. She knew that when Davren’s pride was raw, any word from an older sister sounded like pity, and pity was the one thing he couldn’t bear.
