By late afternoon on Day 123, the four climbers had gathered in the upper entry hall of the Windpit headhouse, the heavy iron-banded oak door barred behind them against the rising mountain wind.
Outside, the sun was dropping toward the jagged western teeth of the Spine, casting long banners of crimson, amber, and violet light across the vast, wind-scoured snowfields. Inside the stone hall, the air was freezing. But compared to the oppressive, upright deep pit of the five-hundred-pace shaft, the solid granite floor beneath their boots felt like paradise.
Paxa set up their bivouac on the broad stone benches near the southern arrow-slits. There, the dying sunlight provided a few final minutes of natural warmth. She lit two animal fat hurricane lanterns, setting them on an iron-banded storage chest. Then she set a small copper pan of clean firn snow over the alcohol spirit-lamp to melt water for tea.
“Sit down, Kezra,” Paxa ordered, pointing her shears toward the nearest bench. “Let me see that hand before the dressing stiffens.”
Kezra unbuckled her pack. She laid her brass-and-ash sounding rod carefully across the stone bench, and sat down. She extended her right arm. She watched as Paxa carefully sliced through the linen adhesive strips with her small medical shears.
