The afternoon light filtering through the bleached canvas awning turned the pale rag paper to the color of warm milk. Outside, the steady clink of iron horseshoes against the anvil at the far end of the caravan camp provided a rhythmic, metal pulse that echoed off the dry limestone terrace.
Kezra Venn unbuckled the double brass straps of her waterproof leather portfolio, reached into the stiff inside parchment sleeve. Then she drew out a rolled sheet of heavy, charcoal-smudged drafting linen.
It was the rubbing and scaled height diagram she had made on Day 24, beneath the rot-resistant white-oak floor beam of the abandoned bi-lithic toll booth in the lower Blackglass pass.
“Spread it beside Davren’s sheet, Fellis,” Kezra said. She held her head slightly tilted to keep her good right ear angled toward the table. “Use the river pebbles to weight the corners. Don’t let the linen touch the wet ink on his margins, and keep the flat ruler off the charcoal lines.”
Fellis Dain cleared two wooden awls and an ink scraper from the handcart’s tailboard and carefully pinned the four corners of the Blackglass rubbing. He worked with careful, practiced gentleness, his movements economical and quiet.
On the left side of the ash planking lay Kezra’s charcoal diagram. A two-foot-wide drawing of a heavy white-oak foundation timber, carved with ancient survey-corps notches that depicted a height profile rising in three distinct, stepped planes from west to east. On the right lay Davren’s brass-tube drawing of Empty Choir’s…
