Kezra Venn stepped half a pace forward, placing herself squarely between Captain Hest Vale and the pack mule.
She didn’t reach inside her coat. She didn’t raise her sounding rod as a weapon. She stood with her boots planted in the dry fiery ruts, her stance calm, observant. Then she grounded in the quiet discipline of a land-mapper holding a weighted drop-line against a gale.
“This toll booth has been roofless for ten years, Captain,” Kezra said, her voice clear and steady across the fifteen paces of open dust. “Its gates are rotted, its water tank is dry, and its foundation joins a road wall that the parish ceased maintaining before I was born. What lawful toll applies to a land-mapper carrying her own instruments and her own paper?”
Captain Vale’s eyes narrowed slightly in skilled test. She rested her right deerskin glove on her saddle cantle, regarding Kezra as a seasoned judge might regard a surprisingly articulate tenant farmer.
“No silver toll at all, Mistress Venn,” Captain Vale answered, her tone measured and reasonable. “The Cairn Host doesn’t extort coppers from country travelers. Our concern is strategic security. Yesterday morning, my runner brought me the leather map case that was recovered from your lodging at Splitflint Hostel.”
