The brass aiming cross didn’t lie, and that was the main trouble with brass.
Giles Croft leaned over the eyepiece of the sight sighting scope, his boot heel planted against the granite flagging of Haven-Hold’s lowest defensive terrace. The morning air smelled of wet slate, sulfur steam from the lower valley water chutes, and cold river mist drifting off the canyon rim.
Three hundred paces to the south, Toby Karr held the painted leveling rod steady against the bronze bench-mark pin. The boy didn’t waver. At nineteen, Toby had developed the patient, motionless stance of an experienced land-mapper. Even so, his knuckles were raw from the autumn wind.
Giles tapped the fine-shift tangent screw with his thumb. The crosshair rose, hovered, and settled.
It didn’t split the etched black zero line. It rested exactly on the red graduation a tiny fraction of an inch below it.
“Hold your weighted drop-line, Toby,” Giles called through the morning quiet.
“Plumb is true, Lord Giles,” Toby shouted back, his breath pluming white. “The bob is hanging dead center in the oil cup. Not a breath of sway.”
Giles took his pocket notebook from his vest and recorded the figure.
