(Commander Renn POV)
The parapet had broken away on its western side in a ragged gap a little wider than a cart. Below it, the slope fell steeply toward the valley floor, broken stone and dry grass, and beyond the valley the brown hills went on to the far ridge, bare against the sky.
At the lip, the stone was scraped in long dragging marks, as though something had come over the edge heavily and badly. A little further down, the scree had slid in a broad fan. Some of that, the surveyor said, would be the parapet coming down. Some might not.
"The students say it went down this way," said the magistrate.
"They watched it go over the lip, all five of them. Lord Vortex heard it after that, stone sliding down toward the border country, until the ridge was between them." I looked down the slope. "Lord Vortex says it was dragging the leg on the same side as the shoulder Vellaroux had burned."
