Linnea cleared the basalt table with two brisk sweeps of her leather apron.
She pushed aside crumpled drafting parchment, dried cabbage leaves, and brass calipers, creating an open space four feet across.
Four iron lanterns were placed at the cardinal points of the stone slab, casting bright, overlapping circles of amber light across the damp basalt.
From a long copper tube, Linnea shook out the master nautical chart of the Star-Fall Archipelago.
The chart was drawn on oiled sea-drake hide, marked with deep-water bathymetric lines, hidden shoals, and sixty-four Sanctuary island strongholds.
Elder Sterling, Sera Thorne, Barnaby Holt, and Deacon Vane gathered around the edges, their breath forming pale plumes in the grotto air.
Kaelen walked over from the console, carrying Claire Vance’s recipe book in one hand and a thin sheet of transparent mica in the other.
On the mica, he had transcribed the exact acoustic frequency curve measured during the resonance test.
