Location:The Gate — the cut's mouth, the slot, the yard
Date/Time:25 Frostforge 9943 AZI, Kindleday, morning → midday
Realm:Lower Realm
Grit was going uphill.
Jayde saw it a little after first light, standing at the mouth of the cut beside Canirr with a cup of something hot that somebody had put into her hands and that she had not yet drunk. The floor of the slot was ice over stone, worn smooth by years of small feet, and on the ice lay what always lay on the floor of a cut in a cliff: grit, fine as meal, a little brown, fallen from the walls. It had lain still all night. Now it was moving. Not much. A grain at a time, in no wind, it was going up the slot away from her, toward the narrows, against the slope, as sand goes down a dune.
She watched it long enough to be sure. Then the cup went down on the stone at her feet, set there without looking.
