At midday on Day 43, the heat in the Saltglass quarry was intense enough to make the distant limestone cliffs shimmer like white water.
Standing at the northern edge of the southern counterpart quarry bench—Site Fourteen—Kezra Venn held an unrolled bolt of bright, red-painted hemp rope in her hands. Beside her, Fellis Dain knelt with a heavy iron star-drill and a four-pound sledge. He drove a series of two-inch holes into the limestone floor six inches outside the surveyed sixty-four-pace boundary line.
Behind them, three wagon drivers from Joric’s crew were watching with open curiosity, their shirts soaked with sweat, their leather aprons grey with stone dust.
“I still don’t see why we can’t ride the wagons across when the rock moves, Mapmaker,” one of the younger wagon drivers, a lean upland lad named Kesten, asked while leaning on his sledgehammer. “If you’re moving sixty-four paces of road, why can’t we sit on our wagon boxes and move with it? It would save two hours of hitching teams and hauling freight up that steep switchback.”
Kezra turned, her face calm and serious as she looked at the young wagon driver.
“Because moving living passengers needs twelve hours of voluntary preparation, Kesten,” Kezra explained. Her voice carried the clear, educational rhythm she had learned from Davren. “Under the laws of cartographic shifted weight, a human passenger must wear a voluntary copper-and-thread identification tag, checked by three independent soundings over half a day. During the exchange, a passenger experiences severe vestibular disorientation—violent…
