In a tale sung by a tavern minstrel over a pot of spiced cider, this would be the moment. Just then, the sorceress stepped into the center of the road, uttered an ancient word of power. Then he shattered the enemy with a blinding flash of blue fire.
She stood in the dry fiery gravel of the toll booth courtyard. Kezra Venn felt the exact, unbending, clockwork reality of the class she held.
Under her linen vest, the bonded survey notebook rested warm and quiet against her ribs. She didn’t need to open the waxed leather cover to know the state of her ledger. Every line, every mark, and every cooldown timer was burned into her memory:
Eight completed circuits. Seven live addresses. The Kilnstep drying-shed doorstone. Maud’s clay patch. The two Plot squares at the abandoned limeworks. The weighing station platform on the eastern road. The temporary Step shelf on the high Blackglass goat route. The cleared dark rock yard at Splitflint Hostel.
Every single one of those parcels was approved. Every single one was held in live ink, connected to the boots on her feet by thirty-six miles of unbroken, personally walked mountain road. Every single one was fully off cooldown, ready to exchange its volume at a breath.
