The archivist put a clean board beneath the drawing copy before he asked a question.
Its earlier support had been a narrow ledge with stones weighing the corners. He brought a flatter surface from the nearby room, checked it for grit with his palm, and moved each stone without letting the paper curl. Sera watched him preserve a copy she had thought of chiefly as a way to recognize a mark.
“My name is Ilyan,” he said through the interpreter. “I keep records here.”
He wore a dark coat repaired at both cuffs. A cord secured his spectacles behind his head, and he had ink along the side of one finger. He looked at the figures, then the repeated sign, then the recovery reference Sera had written for the original.
“Travelers’ refuge,” he said.
“The coastal shelter?”
He asked her to show the position on her permitted exterior notes. She did, leaving the protected internal route pages closed. He compared the doorway sketch and the copied mark, then nodded.
“An old refuge. People stayed there before your expeditions found it.”
