Inside the gatehouse arch of the hill fort, Noll Vey leaned his limestone shoulder against the cold granite masonry and pressed two thick stone fingers to the flared brass cone of the culvert acoustic line.
Beside him, Prit sat perched on an upturned nail keg with his slate across his knees, his skull tilted at a sharp angle to catch every faint vibration travelling up the drainage pipe from the valley floor. Cale stood on the step with his hands tucked into his coat pockets, staring down through the freezing mist toward the yellow lamplight of the Survey House three-quarters of a mile below.
“Is the token clear, Master?” Prit asked, his dry jaw clicking softly.
“Clear enough to hear an owl blink,” Noll rumbled.
Through the Bastion bedrock and the lime-washed passage token stitched into the hem of Sella Rusk’s oilskin cape, Noll could sense the interior of the Survey House almost as distinctly as if he were standing on its polished oak floorboards. Sella had climbed the stone water-cistern outside the second-floor parlor, perching on the wet slate ledge beneath the leaded casement where Lady Serit’s voice cut through the draft like a surgeon’s lancet.
Beneath the parlor floor, seventy feet down in the locked foundation vault, Anchor Two hummed with its steady, oily vibration—the Master Oath-Silver Register Core spinning its web of state truth into the night.
