The charcoal fire outside Empty Choir burned down to a mound of dull orange embers, banked with gray ash against the midnight freeze.
Bram and Orel had rolled themselves into their sheepskin sleeping bags beneath the low overhang of the rock hollow, their heavy, regular breathing mingling with the constant hum of the plateau wind. But around the banked fire, Kezra, Yseld. Paxa remained awake, sitting close together on their wool blankets with their coat collars pulled high against the frost.
Kezra held Davren’s horn-handled work knife in her right hand, using the point of the blade to trace a rough rectangle in the hard dirt between her boots.
“If we’re going to do this,” Kezra said, her voice dropping to a low, quiet murmur that barely carried past the stone hearth, “we need to name the truth of what we’re doing before we walk down the mountain. We have approved Empty Choir. In seven days we’ll reach Stonewake. But when I stand before Marshal Solvan Krail and Captain Hest Vale, I’ll not be speaking the truth of an honest land-mapper.”
Yseld looked up from checking the bindings on her hooked climbing staff. Her amber eyes reflected the dim orange coals. “You’re going to use the North Relay chart.”
