Kezra knelt beside the northern anchor peg of the Upper Quarry Terrace, the dry heat of the late morning sun pressing down upon the back of her neck like a heavy, sodden wool blanket.
Around the outer edge of the sixteen-pace square, the white chalk lines snapped straight and true against the grey pale limestone, connecting the four iron corner pins. Fellis Dain sat on an overturned tool crate ten paces back, his bandaged left arm resting in his lap. Meanwhile, his right hand held a horn canteen of cool well water. Yseld stood motionless on the outer rock lip, her spear grounded. She watched the dusty shimmering horizon of the lower basin where distant bitter salt devils spun across the flats.
Kezra laid her bonded survey notebook flat upon a planed cedar board across her knees.
The thick parchment page thirty-nine was no longer a blank sheet of grid lines. The charcoal square she had drawn at dawn was surrounded by a faint, shimmering halo of indigo light—the latent deep ring of the Plot Mapmaker class waiting for the final stroke of validation. Beside the book lay her ruling pen, an ancient instrument of hardened steel fitted into an ox-bone handle, its pool filled with dense, black lampblack ink ground from willow charcoal and winter-pressed walnut oil.
