The quarry cut was older than the war and uglier than the maps.
Cart ruts climbed, then stopped against a shelf of broken stone where a wagon sat with its traces cut and its bed empty except for slats that had never held cloth. Salt was sprinkled on top like a lie someone had remembered at the last minute.
Erna dropped off first, hammer already in her hand.
"That is not storage, that is a stage, and if your ten complainers walk up there in a line they will be a chorus, spread them, I want eyes on the rim before anyone touches the bed."
Rigel sent them anyway, just not as a choir.
Two up the left scree.
Two on the cart.
The rest held the path so nothing polite could come down behind them wearing a sentry's face.
The men on the cart called down that the slats smelled like the miller's house, flour after rain, and that a crate lid at the back had a pale smear in the shape of a hand too neat to be work.
Rigel did not climb yet.
