Night fell over the Spine with sudden, ice-slow swiftness.
At two thousand four hundred and sixty paces height, just fifty paces below the ragged, blue-white edge of the permanent alpine snow line, the twilight stayed for only a few brief moments of violet and copper before vanishing into ink. The heat plummeted through the freezing mark. That turned the moisture in the air into glittering diamond-dust that drifted like sifted flour across the canvas of the wind-tent.
Inside the low shelter, pitched tight in the lee of two massive granite uneven boulders, the space was cramped, intimate, and profoundly warm.
Paxa Sel sat cross-legged on her sheepskin pad, carefully regulating the flame of her small copper alcohol spirit-lamp. Above the silent blue cone of fire, a shallow tin kettle melted clean mountain snow into bubbling water, throwing off steam that condensed into tiny droplets along the canvas ridge-pole. Paxa stirred in a spoonful of dark, roasted barley meal and a handful of dried parsnips. It filled the tent with the nutty, comforting fragrance of home.
Miner Voss was wedged into the corner by the door-flap, his massive shoulders rounded as he used a fine oilstone to dress the burrs off his favorite rock-drill chisel, his breath coming in slow, peaceful whistles. Across from him, Yseld Arken had pulled her shearling coat around her knees. Her keen eyes watched the steady blue flame of the lamp with the relaxed vigilance of a scout who had spent fifty nights under high stars.
