Lune walked the boundary every morning with the survey rod, because that was the trade, and because the Survey House at Lantern Ford stood two leagues short of the place the Crown’s maps said the Crown’s line should be.
The rod was ash, seven feet long and banded with brass at every league, and it had been made in Lowgate by a wheelwright who had never once measured anything he did not intend to sell. Lune did not mind the wheelwright’s habits. The rod was accurate to the pace, and the pace was accurate to the step, and the step, Lune had found, was accurate to the stone, provided one walked it at the right speed and in the right boots. Lune wore the right boots. They had been made at the Mason’s Yard from the offcuts of the Survey House’s own timber, and they were not handsome, and they had carried Lune over every foot of ground between the wall-foot and the Lantern causeway at least four times.
It was early. The mist lay on the marsh like a wet cloth folded over a table, and the causeway’s stones showed through it in dark patches. Lune set the rod’s brass foot on the boundary stone, which was a squared block of Lessaran granite with a Chancery mark on its face and a crack along its shoulder that somebody had filled with grey mortar. Then Lune took out the book and wrote the hour.
