The frost came off the terrace cabbages in stiff, brittle curls as Kezra Venn pulled the second strap of her survey pack through its buckle. Below her, Alderfast’s stone gables were still blue in the dawn twilight, their slate courses gray with rime and chimney smoke hanging flat over the irrigation runs. For nineteen weeks, the basin had been an inescapable enclosure, hemmed in by the sheer fiery walls of the Spine and the armed guard post of Stonewake Citadel commanding the only broad wagon gate. Now, she stood on the northern cart turnaround where the terraced orchards yielded to mountain scrub. She turned her back on the garden walls.
Beside her, Yseld Arken checked the balance of her hooked climbing staff. The wire splices on the ash shaft caught the pale light, neat and tight where Fellis had whipped them with waxed flax before the party gathered at the gate. Yseld didn’t look down at the settlement. Her gaze was fixed on the upper shale shoulders where the stunted larch gave way to bare granite spurs.
“The air is dry,” Yseld said, her voice pitched low beneath the whistling wind that drew off the peaks. “Good for rock, bad for throats. If you wait until you feel very thirsty up here, you’re already behind on water.”
