The wind scoured the rim above the displaced road reach. It carried the dry, bitter-salt smell of the southern flats across the black fiery bench.
Fellis Dain stood with his good hand clutching the hemp strap of his water bottle, his gaze darting between the sixty-four-pace slab of Splitflint limestone and the dark bluffs of the upper ridge. “Kezra, listen to me,” the boy urged, his voice strained with an urgency that verged on panic. “Senn had your working papers in the hostel office for ten minutes. He had tracing charcoal and semi-clear parchment. If Dret is a master map maker who moves sixty-four paces of road at a stroke, what stops him from using your drawing of Kilnstep to drop a company of cavalry straight into Maud’s drying sheds?”
Kezra didn’t answer right away. She walked five paces away from the cut limestone kerb, knelt on the virgin dark rock bedrock. Then she drew her iron sounding rod from its sheath.
She laid the cold metal bar across her palms, looking at Fellis with the calm, rock-steady certainty of an artisan who understood the deepest physics of her craft.
“Fellis,” Kezra said, her voice steady and clear in the thin air. “A map isn’t a gateway. A map is merely carbon ink on rag paper.”
