Felix had found the exact angle at which the stool became almost a chair when Mara called from the gate.
“There’s an inspection.”
He kept his eyes closed.
“We had one yesterday. It went badly for the garden.”
“Different kind.”
That was the trouble with inspections. Apparently they came in families.
He opened one eye. Beyond the gate stood a narrow man with measuring rods strapped across his back. A weighted line hung from his belt. His instrument case was no larger than a loaf, and he had the expression of someone who expected the loaf to be on time.
Felix got up carefully.
Lyra was at the bench, sorting the papers she’d brought back. Before Mara arrived, she’d shown him the notice challenging her sponsorship.
“We’ll need another way,” he’d said.
She had looked ready to give him a longer explanation.
“That’s it?”
“Unless the paper has an alternate use.”
She’d let out a breath and folded it beside her protective order. The conversation wasn’t finished, but neither of them had found the next useful sentence before the gate interrupted.
Now she raised her head as the visitor unstrapped his rods.
“I’m here for the valuation survey,” he said.
Felix looked toward the cottage shutter.
“Excellent. That one bangs in a north wind. Could we start there?”
“I require the lower structural references.”
“The shutter’s quite low if you lie down.”
The man produced a permit.
Mara handed Felix the accompanying notice. “Academy seal. Registered this morning.”
He read both, then read the permit again without trying to enjoy it.
The academy still owned the property. Apparently that included allowing people to examine it before selling it out from under him. The pending petition didn’t stop a witnessed valuation. The red safety barriers did stop anyone from wandering wherever he liked.
“Noninvasive,” Felix said.
“Yes.”
“No opening sealed apparatus. No removal. No crossing a closed barrier.”
“Those are the stated terms.”
“I’ve had visitors who treated the stated terms as a warm-up.”
The surveyor took his gloves from the instrument case. “I prefer measurements I can use. An invalid inspection wastes both our time.”
Felix looked at Mara.
“You saw him come across?”
“One basket. Equipment weighed separately.”
“And you’re staying?”
She lifted the witness line on her notice.
“Until he leaves.”
They waited at the workshop while Tamsin finished marking the support timber. The surveyor studied the garden wall rather than the roof, even when the shutter knocked twice behind him.
Felix found this personally offensive on the shutter’s behalf.
Tamsin came over, read the access terms and pointed out the usable path. The lower shelf had a sound waiting position and a tie point. Beyond the red mark, there was loose masonry she had not assessed.
“Don’t move my marks,” she told the surveyor.
“I’ll record beside them.”
He accepted a tether, checked it and led the way down the eastern path.
Felix stayed on the broad step above the shelf. He could see the damaged footing, the surviving cable and the pale lower face of the island, with roots trailing from a crack where no gardener could reach.
The surveyor fixed his line at an old stone pin. The weight dropped into open air and swung slowly until he caught the motion against a second reference. He extended a rod, took an angle and wrote it down.
Then he moved to another mark that had nothing to do with the cottage wall.
Mara entered the positions on her route sheet. Felix watched the man’s pencil travel.
“Is this a standard house survey?”
“Connected formations affect the valuation.”
“So does the roof. Allegedly.”
“I’m not appraising the roof.”
The answer was mild. That made it less reassuring.
The surveyor measured from the bridge footing toward an older band of stone beneath the garden. His line crossed the first at an angle Felix could follow without understanding why someone would pay for it.
“Is the buried system operational?” the man asked.
“The district’s paying for an inspection and temporary stabilization.”
“At what load?”
“An unfinished inspection load.”
“Do you have maintenance readings?”
Felix glanced down at the deck in his coat pocket.
“The permit covers property access. You’ll need to ask the district about its contracted findings.”
The surveyor nodded once and wrote something shorter than Felix’s answer.
The weight on the line turned in the wind. Far below, people moved along a terrace carrying a door between them. Felix recognized the blue roof patched on the stair route. From this height it looked no more substantial than a folded rag.
“What are you valuing separately?” he asked.
“The fixed structure, connected works and removable apparatus.”
Felix looked back at him.
“Removable?”
“A standard category.”
The surveyor reeled in the line before moving. He wasn’t careless. He watched his footing, protected the equipment and kept clear of Tamsin’s marks. Felix wished the man were worse at his job. It would have made disliking the visit simpler.
A gust caught the line and pushed it against the underside of an old iron bracket. The surveyor stopped writing. He waited for the gust to pass, then lifted the weight without jerking it.
It didn’t come free.
Felix looked toward the red barrier. The bracket lay just beyond it, close enough that a man might persuade himself one step didn’t count.
The surveyor tested the line’s tension with two fingers.
“There’s a lower approach?”
“Closed,” Tamsin called from the path above. She had been checking a brace mark, not watching his pencil. She watched him now.
“Can you authorize—”
“No.”
He considered the angle, secured his notebook and lowered a little slack. The weight dropped below the bracket. He swung it away, raised it smoothly and caught it against his glove.
Felix hadn’t realized he’d been waiting to breathe until the line was clear.
“There,” he said. “A free example of why we’re still inspecting.”
The surveyor glanced at the scratched weight. “A bent mounting. It wasn’t on the earlier drawing.”
“Several things aren’t.”
He recorded the bracket anyway, including the turn needed to clear it. Tamsin came down far enough to see the position from the approved step. She marked it on her own sheet for a later repair crew.
Felix looked at the two notebooks. The same piece of damaged iron had become a valuation detail and an obstacle somebody would have to reach with tools.
The surveyor chose another stone pin for his baseline. It was farther back and required extending the rod twice. He measured both extensions, then checked the line against the original reference.
“Longer way,” Felix said.
“Usable result.”
Tamsin returned to her work. Felix stayed where she’d put him, his right arm aching gently inside its support. The visitor wasn’t going to give him a convenient reason to end the inspection. He would have to keep listening to answers he didn’t like.
On the surveyor’s page, a neat dotted line now connected the new reference to the older stone band. The dotted line passed beneath the garden rather than through the cottage. Felix watched him underline the distance before closing his notebook for the walk uphill.
At the garden gate, he requested another angle.
“Outside the cover,” Felix said.
“The outline suggests a central reference below grade.”
“Which is covered because we haven’t made it safe.”
Tamsin’s crossed bars remained exactly where she’d put them. Pell had tied a scrap of red cloth to the little fence. The surveyor examined the arrangement and took a folded drawing from his case.
Felix caught a glimpse of two rings nested inside one another, with a projection on the side. It resembled the pale housing beneath the garden closely enough to make him step forward.
The man turned the sheet to check a figure.
“Could I see the specification?” Felix asked.
“This isn’t a specification.”
“What is it?”
“An earlier outline supplied for comparison.”
“Supplied by whom?”
The surveyor folded it along its existing crease. “My instruction is to determine the present dimensions. The client correspondence isn’t included in your access notice.”
Felix disliked being answered with his own boundary. It remained a boundary.
He held out the permit again.
“Then these measurements stay outside the cover.”
The surveyor checked a distance from the fence and drove no stake, leaving only a small chalk cross on exposed stone. Mara noted it before the wind could erase the dust.
Lyra joined them from the workshop, her satchel fastened. She read the permit while the line settled.
“You’re not inspecting for safety authority,” she said.
“No.”
“Then the public inspection’s incomplete,” she said to Felix. “That’s the answer you can give.”
The surveyor looked up. “Has equipment been removed?”
“That’s part of what we’re examining,” Felix said.
It felt evasive until he remembered the bolts laid neatly in their tray. They knew what they’d seen. They didn’t yet know who owned what had occupied the socket, why it had gone or when.
He wasn’t giving this stranger the worker records because the stranger had a ruler.
The surveyor finished his angle and checked it against the earlier measurement. A crease formed between his eyebrows. He took it again.
“Wrong?” Felix asked.
“Different.”
“From the drawing?”
“From the expected position.”
He wrote the second reading beside the first. No explanation appeared on the deck. No helpful label named his employer. The man simply had a result Felix couldn’t interpret and an old drawing Felix didn’t possess.
At the gate, Felix stopped him before he could pack the rods.
“If somebody bought the removable apparatus, what would happen to the people below?”
The surveyor looked past him toward the terrace.
“Removal would require separate authorization and engineering approval.”
“Has anyone shown you that approval?”
“No. This is a valuation.”
“A replacement plan?”
“Not among my instructions.”
Felix let the answer sit between them. The man did not promise that everything would be fine. He also didn’t appear bothered that he couldn’t.
Mara bent over her sheet.
“I’ll need the valuation reference for the witnessed visit.”
The surveyor gave it. She copied the number onto Felix’s notice and asked him to check it.
Only then did she sign.
They escorted him back toward the cable landing. Tamsin checked that the rods and case remained within the agreed equipment load. The basket carried him away alone, upright and apparently untroubled by the distance beneath his boots.
Felix resented that too.
Mara watched him reach the far platform.
“Someone asked me about paths beneath here before the auction notice,” she said.
“The same man?”
“I don’t think so. I didn’t see this one’s face before today.”
“Same employer?”
“I don’t know. Different badge. That doesn’t always mean different people paying.”
She wrote the earlier request beneath the current route note, giving its uncertain parts their own space.
“Can I have a copy?” Felix asked.
“Of the witnessed visit. I’ll put the other inquiry through the office too.”
“Thank you.”
She looked surprised, then nodded and went to wait for her own crossing.
At the workshop, Felix drew three lines on the back of a rejected cutting sketch. His first attempt converged beneath the pantry.
Tamsin turned the page.
“You’re measuring from the wrong corner.”
“That explains my concern for the beans.”
He tried again with the garden wall and the bridge footing marked. This time the lines met around the housing below the covered shaft.
Lyra rested her document board against the bench. Barnaby landed beside it, keeping his feet clear of wet ink.
“He had a drawing,” Felix said. “Not enough to build from. Enough to expect something there.”
Tamsin examined the crossed lines. “You’ll want the old route map.”
Barnaby opened his beak.
Felix held up his pencil.
“And the current one. I want to know where a person can actually go.”
Beyond the window, the shutter banged again. Nobody had looked at its catch. Felix set the pencil down, picked it back up and wrote the valuation number beneath the drawing.