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crawled to the edge to look down. Luci could feel her thinking of things they could sculpt with those jagged lances.
    Wynn’s head snapped back as if he’d been struck by what he heard in that crevasse. He let himself down soundlessly and approached the sisters.
    “Run, Luci,” whispered Madi. “He’s angry.”
    No
, thought Luci.
He wants our help
.
    “You’ll get us into trouble,” Madi growled, coming up to Luci’s shoulder.
    Wynn wagged a finger in their faces as if they were obstinate children. “If you want Cal-raven to live another day, you need to help me. Right now.”
    Luci could see the moon like red jewels in the boy’s wide eyes, but those eyes were on Madi. She stepped closer and rested her wrist’s beaded bracelet on his shoulder to win his attention. “We promise to help,” she said just as Madi said the same thing. They turned and scowled at each other.
    Wynn spelled out instructions. All memories of the quake fell away. This conversation made them feel hot and cold at the same time. A different kind of quake had begun, and when the shaking stopped, the world would be changed. They would be changed. Here in the open, under a rising red moon, the sisters’ doubts dissolved. In a sudden decision, as final and immovable as the stone, they sealed the crevasse and trapped the soldiers inside.

3
R IDDLES IN THE D ARK
    K rawg found the king kneeling in the entry cave, stroking Say-ressa’s bloodied cheek. Lying beside two others nearly crushed in the cave collapse, Abascar’s beloved healer rasped through a dust-choked throat while her apprentices guessed what they could about unseen injuries.
    “Would this be of any comfort?” Krawg, his knees popping, approached the king, offering a purple scarf.
    Cal-raven took it with cautious hands. “Auralia made this.” He nodded to acknowledge Krawg’s generous sacrifice. “Thank you.”
    “Has healing properties, it does,” Krawg muttered. “It’s Warney’s.” He felt the heat of displeasure in the crowd behind him. Some would protest that a scarf with healing powers was just the sort of superstition the Gatherers were prone to believe. Among Housefolk, suspicions lingered that the Gatherers, former criminals, had all gone rather strange in the head during their hard labor outside the protection of Abascar’s walls. But the king had given the Gatherers a chance to prove themselves responsible.
    Krawg and Warney, famous thieves, had become resourceful and productive; through the winter they helped House Abascar gather a harvest from this barren region. Krawg approached the king with some confidence, for Cal-raven respected their experience, and he was not one to doubt claims about the power of Auralia’s colors.
    “You look like a Bel Amican,” Cal-raven told Say-ressa after binding the scarf around her head. “As lovely now as you were when you caught Ark-robin’s eye.”
    Krawg withdrew, wrapped in joy for having provided help. He knew thesubtle ministry of Auralia’s colors, knew the scarf would cool the healer’s fevers. He had a scarf just like it, after all. But his was yellow, and he would never part with it.
    Somewhere Warney was sweeping the shaken caves. Stalactites had shattered, cobwebs had come down, and walls had broken to puzzle pieces. Krawg moved instead to help others deep within to sift debris from the shallow reservoir of water that sustained them.
    “Didja hear?” That tattling was Hildy the Sad One, a gossipy old Gatherer drifting by on a raft, her sifting net neglected at her side. “Five defenders have gone missin’. Five. Didja hear?”
    Saying most things twice, as always, she kept on, speculating about who the five might be and the grisly ways they might have died. Krawg rowed away. He’d heard enough trouble already today.

    At the darkening of the next long day of recovery, what had been a fuss of guesses over the missing defenders’ fate settled into a burdensome quiet punctuated by fitful coughing