The morning sun climbed higher into the pale sky above the Blackglass bluffs. He cast sharp slanted shadows across the floorboards of the abandoned toll booth.
Kezra Venn sat on the edge of the central larch beam, her boots dangling into the pea gravel of the drainage trench. On her knees lay her working route journal, open to the page where she had copied Davren’s eight-inch carving stroke for stroke.
Beside her, Yseld Arken traced the three stepped terraces of the northern boundary line with the seasoned ash tip of her climbing staff. The guide’s bandaged left arm rested quietly across her lap. But her right hand moved with deliberate, steady power.
“Look at the mathematics of this line, Kezra,” Yseld said, her voice echoing softly against the limestone walls. “When you’re down in the river plains, finding two sixteen-pace squares that match within a handspan along their four borders is simple enough. You find an open meadow of flat clover, you check that the soil doesn’t drop more than four inches from north to south. Your book gives you sign-off. Even at sixty-four paces—Reach scale—a river delta offers flat gravel benches that can exchange without shearing.”
She looked up through the roofless gables toward the jagged fiery peaks rising three thousand arm-lengths above their heads.
