The greasewood fire popped sharply against the damp chill of the dark rock overhang, throwing a spray of red embers across the packed white chalk-stone dirt. Outside the curve of the dike, the mountain wind poured down from the upper chimneys with a steady, dry rattle, scouring the scree and carrying the sharp smell of cold limestone and crushed juniper needles.
Fellis Dain sat on an inverted grain bucket near the tailboard of the handcart, his bone scraper resting on his knees. Meanwhile, his brass rigger’s magnifying glass swung from its rawhide lanyard against his canvas smock. He reached out with a thumb hardened by years of handling thick ship rope cables and tapped the open page of Kezra Venn’s Bonded Survey Notebook.
“Explain it to me without the land-mapper jargon, Yseld,” Fellis said, squinting across the hearth at the scout. “You were an army scout for four years. You know how Krail’s staff officers think. In my trade, an anchor is an eight-pound iron fluke hooked into harbor silt. Or an eyebolt driven into granite to hold a derrick stay. You cut the rope, and the ship drifts. Why does a stone block buried under Orren Vane’s slaking pit in Kilnstep give a royal marshal a grip on a girl standing sixty leagues away in the white chalk-stone flats?”
