The cooperage shed smelled of dry-rotted white oak, crystal-hardened wine dregs, and the bitter sulfur wash that Ivara Quill used to keep mold from eating her drafting linen.
Len stood just inside the sagging pine door, the brass metal ring of his sounding pole planted between two warped floorboards. His left arm throbbed in its canvas sling, the steady, rhythmic ache spreading into his shoulder. Every beat of his heart sent a hot prickle along the horsehair stitches where the double had torn the skin two midnights ago at the border depot.
Ivara didn’t rise from her three-legged stool. Her single sound hand—the right, scarred across the knuckles from cold bronze measuring tongs—continued its measured strokes with the whetstone. The blade was a standard land-mapper’s grafting knife, five inches of carbon steel with a curved point designed for slicing leather survey markers and notching timber stakes.
“Show me the slip,” she said, without pausing the stone.
Len reached into his vest pocket, drawing out the coarse gray wood-pulp paper. He handed it to her.
Ivara laid the knife across her knee, taking the slip between her thumb and forefinger. She held it close to the candle stub burning inside the overturned iron kettle, her gray eyes narrowing as she inspected the three-sided punch mark in the corner. She brought the paper to her nose, sniffing the ink with clean, steady care.
