By midday, the cold draft dropping through the spiral stair carried the faint, clean ring of marsh-iron against bronze from the vault overhead.
Up in the Listening Crown, Ilyra and Daro Kesh were moving—not striking the restraint needles or testing Vaska Ren’s patience on the steps, but working through slow, deliberate footwork patterns along the three-pace stone crescent outside Nara Soth’s lattice. Every time Ilyra’s spear shaft pivoted or Daro’s boot settled on the upper flat stone slabs, a muted shaking traveled down the bronze wall, stopped at the seventh step where Vaska sat. Then it dissolved into the surrounding hum of the stone base.
At the worktable below, three large sheets of supply parchment were now covered in dense, cross-hatched charcoal drawings.
Seyun stood with his Account Book open beside Osen Tal’s elbow, comparing the steward’s learned by heart workshop elevations against the small, cramped copy of Master Uren’s breathing diagram he had transcribed in the abbey cellar months ago. Mina leaned over the opposite side of the table. She held a brass oil lamp low so the yellow light fell squarely across the measurements Osen had written in the margins: collar thickness: three fen. Silver-solder lip: half-cun. Limestone channel depth: four cun below mortar line.
