The rain drumming upon the cedar shake roof of the Old Mill had settled into a dense, whispering curtain that muffled every sound beyond twenty paces. Through the gaps in the timber walls, the gray mist of the river basin drifted across the floorboards in low, curling tendrils that smelled of wet sedge and cold limestone.
Jon Hale stood beside the flour bin, watching Iven’s hands.
The scout had laid the two pieces of parchment flat upon the weathered wood, smoothing the wrinkles with her rough thumb. On the left lay the imperial engineering survey with its horrifying tallies of human fuel; on the right lay her own rough charcoal sketch of the approach trenches. Between them, like a bridge connecting two worlds of ink and blood, sat the two halves of the torn linen vanguard map.
“Look at the fibers,” Iven said, her voice dropping to a low, gravelly murmur as she nudged the linen scraps with her knife point. “See how the thread pulls to the left where the warp broke? A man can forge an imperial seal with enough melted wax and a copper die. You cannot forge the way five-year-old river linen frays along the selvedge.”
