The yellow light of the animal fat lantern pooled across the thick, rag-linen leaves of Kezra Venn’s Bonded Survey Notebook. The pages were dense with careful notations. Map point grids, height benchmarks, soil compaction ratios, and the fine sharp-angled diagrams that recorded every rod and chain she had walked since leaving the Kilnstep valley.
Fellis Dain leaned over the handcart’s sideboard. He held the glass chimney of the lantern steady against the gusts of cold air that slipped beneath the canvas awning. Paxa Sel stood opposite him, her arms folded tightly inside her wool shawl, her dark eyes scanning the numbers with the practiced scrutiny of a physician checking a ledger of vital signs.
“Turn to the foundation leaves, Kezra,” Paxa said quietly. “Before we touch a drop of ink, we need to see the entire skeleton of your survey. A surgeon doesn’t sever a tendon without knowing which muscle will go slack.”
Kezra nodded, her fingertips gently turning the heavy leaves back toward the beginning of the volume. She stopped at the four-page spread that recorded her earliest work. The foundational plots surveyed during the cold weeks of early spring. Just then, the idea of moving mountains was nothing more than an impossible whisper in an apprentice’s heart.
