Cale took off his oilskin hat as he crossed the inner threshold, mostly because the March Ledger manual required a surveying officer to uncover inside a roofed dwelling, and partly because taking it off was the only sure way to stop the brim from sliding down over his nose.
The instant his boots stepped off the wet porch flags into the Grand Hall, the air changed.
Outside, the mountain morning smelled of cold clay, sheep-wash, and wet slate. Inside, the room felt as warm and dry as the back parlor of a prosperous coaching inn. A big iron kettle simmered over a stone hearth that held neither split pine nor pit-coal—only a deep, smokeless amber glow rising straight out of the scrubbed limestone blocks. To Cale’s left, a stocky cook with forearms like salted hams stood by a pine bench slicing barley bread, while a thin dark-haired boy sat near the chimney corner sorting dried yarrow stems onto a clean cloth.
Even stranger was the niche five feet up the western wall.
Set into the mortar was a fist-sized facet of deep blue stone, and crouched on the narrow ledge directly beneath it was a creature no larger than a three-month lamb, assembled entirely out of clean, pale bone. The creature wore a sleeveless leather vest, held a flat grey slate across its knees, and had three stubs of chalk—white, grey, and red—lined up beside its heel. As Cale walked past, the bone creature tilted its bird-like skull and watched…
