The dusk gathered quickly across the high terrace. That turned the pale limestone dust along the track to the cold color of lead. In the caravan camp sheltered behind the dark rock reef, horn lanterns were being lit along the tailboards of Joric Thane’s freight wagons, their yellow rays throwing long, skeletal wheel shadows across the hardpan. The mules stood in a quiet line by the water butts, their ears flicking forward. The night wind rose from the salt basins below.
Inside Kezra Venn, the quiet relief of retiring the southern limeworks parcel was burning away, replaced by a sudden, choking wave of pure fury.
It rose from her chest into her throat like bitter wood smoke. Four royal troopers were sitting on the stone benches behind the west kiln in Kilnstep, their carbines resting across their knees, spitting tobacco juice into the dust of her mother’s lane. They were holding three wagons of finished clay pot hostage—six families’ winter grain money, the bread of forty neighbors who had watched her grow from an awkward girl into a land-mapper—all. That was because she had carried a notebook out of the valley and dared to measure the world.
She gripped her ash sounding rod so hard her knuckles turned white under the buckskin.
