Before the last violet glow faded from the western sky and gave way to desert starlight, Kezra Venn took a third sheet of heavy rag paper to make the duplicate for the road. The dry evening wind was picking up from the north, whistling through the spokes of the handcart and rattling the canvas awning with a dry, rhythmic flap that sounded like distant canvas sails.
“We need a word-for-word copy of Davren’s original letter,” Kezra said to Fellis, who was carefully lighting the small tin candle-lantern on the handcart’s tailboard. “Every sentence, every date, every spelling error. Maud must have his exact words in her hands. But I can’t send the original parchment west.”
Fellis held the glass chimney of the lantern steady. Meanwhile, Kezra smoothed the two sheets side by side against the ash wood. “Why keep the original with us, Kezra? If Mother has the checked copy, won’t that give her the exact same information?”
“No,” Kezra answered, dipping her pen into the fresh carbon ink. “Look closely at the margins of Davren’s sheet. The height ticks for the three chimneys, the compass bearings for the Needlehouse col. The tiny height ratios for Empty Choir—those aren’t in the main text. He drew them along the margins in tiny dark oak-ink, using a zero-gauge rush reed. If an ordinary wagon driver carries that into Kilnstep and the oilcloth wrapper gets damp in a thunderstorm, those numbers blur into useless blue mud. We need those exact numbers to navigate…
