The wind howling down from the northern crags carried a sharp, stinging sleet that rattled against the brass tube of the transit telescope like birdshot. Len Vey stood on the narrow upkeep terrace seventy feet above the quarry floor, his boots wedged into the frozen crevices between two granite coping stones. His right hand gripped the knurled brass leveling screws of the instrument.
His left arm was strapped securely against his woolen vest, the braced radius held rigid by three layers of tarred linen and two split-ash laths. The cold had numbed his fingers within ten minutes. But the deep, throbbing ache where the fractured bone ends met beneath the swelling was a constant, burning reminder of his physical limit. Every time a gust of wind caught the skirts of his courier coat, a sharp burst shot upward into his shoulder. That forced him to lean his weight against the stone base to keep his footing.
Beside him, tucked into the shelter of an overhanging rock shelf, sat twelve-year-old Heth Ash. She was wrapped in two of Doma Reel’s heavy woolen shawls, her small boots buried in an empty coal sack to keep off the frost. On her lap rested a shallow wooden tray containing the four painted signal paddles, arranged in the exact order Len had specified: Triangle, Chevron, Double-bar, Cross.
