To stop searching was harder than digging through granite.
For a man who had spent thirty mortal years scanning crowds for bailiffs, marks, and wealthy merchants, looking away felt unnatural. In the market squares, survival had meant watching every shifting eye, every hand sliding toward a belt purse, every subtle twitch of an alderman’s jaw. In the fort, it had meant tracking every hairline stress fracture in the masonry and counting every footfall along the palisade ditch.
Now, Noll Vey had to withdraw his vision entirely from the fissure behind Master Number Four.
He pulled his Bastion reach back through the living rock. He stopped measuring the depth of the crack; he ceased probing the elastic fold in the bedrock; he closed down the sharp, inquisitive edge of his stone awareness until he was simply feeling the cold mass of the hill around them. In the quiet channel, Tessa set the horn lantern on the muddy floor and turned its brass shutter until the beam was reduced to a soft, amber smudge against her boots.
“Step back, Prit,” Tessa said quietly. “Sit on the dry ledge by the arch. Keep your hands in your lap.”
The bone imp obeyed without a word, though his movements were stiff and slow. He dragged himself across the silt, his woolen skirts rustling, and sat down with his back against the rough limestone wall. He laid File Number Four flat upon his knees and placed his bony hands over the sheepskin cover, holding it…
