The golden twilight of Day 159 faded into a deep, violet dusk over the rooftops of Kilnstep. Lanterns were lit along the pottery square, their warm yellow glow lighting up the drying racks and the newly mortared brickwork of the communal kilns.
Beside the medicine room table on the porch of Maud Venn’s house, Paxa Sel was concluding her final medical consultations for the expedition.
Fellis Dain sat on an ash stool before her, his left arm resting on a clean linen towel. Paxa had removed the heavy, rigid cedar splint that had locked still his forearm since the rockfall on Day 72. With gentle, experienced fingers, she massaged the pale, stiff skin of his wrist and palm with an ointment of arnica and wintergreen oil.
“The two broken fingers have knitted cleanly,” Paxa said. She tested the joint mobility with light pressure. “The knuckle has formed a solid calcium callus. The bone is healed, Fellis, but the tendons have shortened from seven weeks of immobility.”
She reached into her medical chest and produced a new splint. A lightweight, beautifully crafted rig of molded saddle leather heavy with thin, flexible ribs of whalebone, secured with three adjustable brass buckles. It supported the wrist and palm while leaving his thumb and the tips of all four fingers fully free.
