On the afternoon of Day 39, the blinding glare over Saltglass softened behind a thin, high haze of fiery dust blowing off the Blackglass ridges.
Her scraped elbows and knees dressed in fresh comfrey salve and wrapped in clean linen, Kezra Venn walked out from the chained inner wagon circle to a cleared sixteen-pace sorting yard at the western margin of Joric’s camp.
The recovery of the notebook had restored her class connection. But the close brush with disaster had left an urgent lesson in its wake. Her active live-site ledger was cluttered with aging addresses that she could no longer protect or visit.
Kezra stood beside a dressed dark rock benchmark at the edge of the yard. She opened her recovered notebook to Page 008, where her advancement ledger lay inscribed.
Her current tally stood at ten completed circuits and eight of eight live sites. The maximum capacity allowed at her rank. Among those eight active sites was the sixteen-pace Plot square she had surveyed at the Splitflint ridge hostel stone yard on Day 19 (Circuit 8).
That hostel yard now lay thirty leagues behind them, deep inside territory patrolled by Captain Hest Vale’s mounted squadrons. Its three outside corner anchors were exposed to enemy discovery. Its thirty-day freshness window was within forty-eight hours of natural expiration.
