Chapter 14: Breck Demolishes a Bridge and Asks a Question

We left the shepherd's hollow before the mist had fully lifted, which was Cassian's preference and therefore, by the logic that had governed our movements since Caelveth, everyone's preference. The grass was wet and the path down to the lowland road was not much of a path, but Breck descended it without complaint and the rest of us followed his broad back in silence.

Nobody spoke about Morvaine. Nobody spoke about anything much. Dara walked with the particular quality of stillness that I had come to recognise as her version of grief — shoulders squared, eyes forward, moving with such deliberate economy that she might have been conserving something she couldn't afford to spend. Seraphine walked beside her and said nothing, which was also a form of kindness. Aldric, to his credit, did not hum.

The Verath suspension bridge appeared around a long bend in the river road at midmorning, strung between two limestone cliffs above a gorge that fell forty feet to white water. It was a serviceable bridge — rope-and-plank construction, wide enough for a cart, old enough that the planking had greyed and the ropes had begun to show individual fibres where the tension was highest. Someone had loved it once, in the practical way that working people love useful things. The gorge below it was very loud.