An hour after sunrise on Day 44, the smell of woodsmoke and roasted very thirsty corn drifted across the newly reopened Saltglass highway.
Kezra Venn sat on a low three-legged camp stool beside the northwest benchmark milestone. She was wrapped in a thick wool blanket that smelled of Paxa’s bitter pine-resin salve. Her left ear was covered by a warm pad of boiled linen soaked in wintergreen oil, held in place by a woolen head-cloth tied beneath her chin.
In her hands, she held a battered tin mug of warm water mixed with coarse salt and honey, sipping the liquid in slow, measured mouthfuls. The sharp, piercing agony in her temple had faded, replaced by a heavy, cottony numbness that made the left side of her head feel as though it were sunk in four feet of cold pond water.
Ten paces away, at the western joint where the newly arrived quarry bench met the native road paving, Master Joric Thane and Yseld Arken were walking the sixty-four-pace seam line.
Several young wagon drivers were already hitching mules to the lead baggage cart, eager to roll across the new stone and put the dangerous quarry behind them.
“Hold those mules!” Yseld’s voice cracked like a whip across the stone floor. “Not a single hoof touches this stone until the joint is inspected!”
