Location:Wild Confederacy — Settlement Windbreak; the pavilion; the north gate yard
Date/Time:TC1858.02.28
The planks were ticking.
Naida heard it as soon as she came in under the hide. A small dry knock, then nothing, then another from further along, then two together. The sledge had come into the pavilion with its load still lashed on, because nobody had wanted to unstrap it in the yard with Esker only just lifted off the top, and somebody had dragged it near the stove and left it there. Now the doubled boards were warming through after a day on the crust, and every few breaths one of them gave a little in the grain and knocked.
Speaker Kael-Ren was at the long table with a lamp and nothing in front of him. Mei sat on the end of the sledge, on the planks, with her hands open on her knees. They were still gray at the fingertips. Somebody had given her a bowl of something, and it sat beside her, untouched, with the steam gone off it.
