The two-inch dip on the eastern cantilever was not a cosmetic flaw.
It was an unacceptable load-bearing shear hazard.
Lord Giles Croft knelt on the shaking foam-stone decking. He held his wooden ruler against the edge of bay twenty.
The cold high-sky gale shrieked through the open steel lattice. It sent a spray of fine freezing mist across his leather sleeves.
“Two point one two five inches,” Giles muttered.
He stood upright, snapping the rule closed with a sharp flick of his wrist.
Beside him, Master Duncan Stone-Splitter held his heavy iron pry bar like a quarterstaff. He looked over the side into the deep pit.
“The stone is weeping, Lord Giles,” Duncan said, his deep voice fighting the wind.
