The kitchen table was buried under charcoal sketches, dried bean hulls, and two unrolled sheepskin maps of Mere’s municipal drainage ditches.
Tessa Dene stood over the drawings with a piece of charred willow twig pinched between thumb and forefinger. Her sleeves were rolled to the elbows, revealing forearms corded with the sinew of seven years spent hauling river-cobbles and lifting oak lintels.
“Here,” Tessa said, stabbing the charcoal point down upon a curved black line that snaked along the valley’s western slope. “This is the overflow race from the upper timber saw-pits. It was built forty years ago by the second duke to drain the spring snowmelt away from the seasoning sheds. It is dry stone masonry, three feet high and two feet wide, lined with dressed river granite.”
Sella Rusk leaned over the table, her dark eyes tracing the charcoal line through the contours of the hill. “Where does it discharge?”
“Into the alder thicket below the old lime kiln,” Tessa said. “Two hundred paces west of Vane’s white tent. The ditch drops through the culvert beneath the wagon road, bypasses the Crown picket entirely, and opens into the storm trench behind the weaver’s lane.”
Prit hopped onto the edge of the bread box, cocking his head like an inquisitive crow. “A stone culvert three feet high. A grown man with a pack cannot squeeze his shoulders through such a bore, Mistress Tessa. Even without an iron gorget, Sergeant Berr’s ribs would wedge tight at the first elbow.”
