The dawn came up over the Saltglass quarry like a pale grey wash laid across wet slate. There was no warmth in the first light, only a cold, scouring wind that dragged the sour smell of bitter salt dust off the eastern salt flats and rattled the stiff canvas tilts of Joric Thane’s nine freight wagons.
Kezra Venn stood four paces inside the western chalk outer edge of the practice yard, her knees aching from the frozen gravel. Her breath formed short, grey plumes in the dry air before shredding against the limestone bluff. In her hands, the bonded notebook lay open across her forearms, its calfskin binding stiff from the overnight frost.
The charcoal-drawn square on page thirty-four was not clear.
Instead of the flat, uninterrupted black stroke that showed an approved, vacant parcel ready for posture, the western boundary line was broken by a pulsing, faint crimson stutter. A small, persistent red knot that flared and faded with the steady regularity of a sleeping heartbeat.
“It makes no sense,” Kezra said. She tapped the ash sounding rod against the toe of her boot. Her voice was scratchy from the dust. “Fellis and the wagon drivers swept this entire sixty-four-pace apron twice yesterday afternoon. We unhooked every trace chain. We led every mule into the outer pens. We caged every chicken in covered willow hampers. Paxa took both watchdogs forty paces up the quarry ramp. There’s not a single living boot, paw, or wing touching this ground. Yet the…
