The lower masonry workshop beneath the municipal stone-yard smelled of damp limestone dust, slaked lime, and the bitter, oily tang of boiled linseed oil. Located two levels below the street grade, carved directly into the natural gray bedrock of the bluff, the room was cool, dry, and entirely immune to the sound of the rain that battered the town above.
Alden Bram stood hunched over a heavy slate drafting slab supported by two stout oak trestles. He wore a stiff leather apron dark with grease stains, his gray hair tied back with a bit of tarred twine, his spectacles perched low on his crooked, thrice-broken nose. In his left hand he held an iron-tipped boxwood ruler, notched in eighths of a cubit; in his right, a pair of heavy brass dividers whose screw-threads were polished bright from forty years of turning.
Across the slate slab lay three oversized sheets of linen-backed drafting paper, pinned flat at the corners with iron chisel heads.
The heavy oak door at the top of the stone stairs creaked open, and Jon Hale came down the narrow steps, his boots leaving damp gray tracks on the grit of the flags. He carried his tin lantern in one hand and the roll of imperial survey vellum in the other.
