Alden Bram took his place on the second tier of the market cross, his ash cane driving hard into the mortar line between two granite blocks. The master mason looked out over the sea of wool caps and linen kerchiefs with the cold, assessing eye he usually reserved for a sagging mill arch. When he reached into the breast of his greasy leather coat and pulled out a three-foot roll of stained linen drafting cloth, the crowd drew back half a step, giving the old engineer room to work.
“Quiet yourselves,” Bram shouted, his gravelly voice carrying over the damp roofs without the need of a herald’s trumpet. “Quiet, or go home to your kettles and wait for the roof to fall on your heads.”
The muttering in the square died to a dry rustle of wool.
Bram unrolled the cloth against the weather-beaten pedestal of the cross, weighting the upper corners with his iron adze head and Jon’s pigskin ledger. The drawing was inked in faded lampblack and rust-colored iron gall, showing a cut-away section of the valley from the river weir up to the crown of the Old Hill. At the bottom of the sheet, beneath fifty feet of blue-shaded river silt, three concentric circles were drawn in heavy black strokes, radiating outward into a network of narrow, angled tunnels that threaded straight beneath the town walls.
