The embers in the great stone fireplace glowed a deep, blazing bright vermilion, casting long, peaceful shadows up the dry cedar walls of the Alderfast common hall. Outside, the night frost was deepening, tightening the mortar in the stone foundation and freezing the drip from the terrace roof edges into tiny clear needles of ice.
Davren leaned his elbows on his knees, his hands clasped so tightly that his scarred knuckles went pale. The iron hinge of his knee brace dug into the coarse wool of his trousers, a constant, unbending reminder of the limestone ledge in the high cols where his stride had ended.
“Tell me what to say to Mother,” Kezra said, her voice quiet in the warm hearth corner. “When I see her again. When the snows break or the road opens.”
Davren stared down at the hearthstones between his boots. For eighteen months, his silence had been an iron-hard wall. First across the leagues of broken mountain between Kilnstep and Alderfast, and then across the crowded frame stand tables of this basin since Kezra had stepped through the southern gallery on Day 92.
“Tell her,” Davren began, his voice tight and hoarse, “tell her that I’m not hiding here because I hate the kiln.”
