Len Vey unrolled the linen topographical route map across the top of the ammunition crate, weighting the lower hem with the cold, blued steel shaft of his spare sounding metal ring.
His right thumb, blackened with soot and scarred by years of handling rough postal hemp, traced the contour lines that rose from the backup cooling court terrace toward the eastern low roof wall of the Star tower castle. The lines were crowded together like the grain in quarter-sawn oak, denoting an eighty-foot upright ascent along narrow external stone switchbacks carved into the sheer granite face of the pinnacle.
At the highest contour line, perched on the isolated eastern turret that overlooked the forty-mile depression of Rookvale, sat a small, eight-sided box drawn in red waterproof ink: DAWN REGISTRAR / HORIZON PRISM HOUSING.
“Eighty paces from the backup breach hatch to the base of the eastern turret,” Len muttered to himself, committing the route to memory with the clockwork discipline of a trail courier memorizing a washed-out river detour. “Forty-two granite steps up the spiral stair. An iron-plated oak door secured by a double-throw bronze deadbolt. Inside, the prism bench bolted directly into the solid mountain stone.”
“And no heating channels,” Ivara Quill said from his elbow, her sounding pole clicking against the crate’s iron binding. “The registrar chamber is fully bare. Ansett Rill designed it so that heat swelling in the stonework wouldn’t throw the sight posture out of true. The heat inside that turret tonight will be twelve…
