He tracked a second shift in the bowl ahead, during which dust rose and fell without wind. Everly rotated her wrists and checked the give of her knee.
She smiled a small smile that didn't reach her eyes. Eager, but not out of control.
The first stone clacked against another stone. A simple sound, not loud, but heavy. Then a second and third.
Figures climbed over the ridge as if the low wall were a stage. They were taller than a man and broader, shoulders like pillars wrapped in plates that looked like granite more than bone.
Gorillas, if someone had asked a sculptor who liked quarries to guess at gorillas and then given the guess teeth for fun.
Their coats were slabs. Their knuckles hit the ground with the thud of sledges set down at shift change.
Eyes glowed faintly, not with heat, but with whatever passed for mind in a thing that measured with sound and weight.
Five of them in the open, one more hanging to a shelf on the cliff like a spare thought.
