At dawn on Day 51, the sun rose over the eastern rim of the Saltglass basin like a red-hot iron disk rising from a slaking vat. It burned away the night mists. Then it turned the broad bitter salt flats into a blinding expanse of white and amber. On the high gravel bench where the caravan highway crossed the eastern fault line, the air was still cold, biting through wool mufflers and stiffening the leather straps of Kezra Venn’s survey haversack.
Kezra walked out to the northwest corner of the sixty-four-pace road bench, with Joric Thane, Yseld Arken, and Fellis Dain.
Over the seven days that had passed since the Day 44 Reach exchange, the transformed highway had become the beating artery of the basin. More than forty heavy freight wagons loaded with salt blocks, bitter salt ash, dried dates, and healing roots had rumbled safely across the imported quarry stone where the deep, collapsed gallery had once yawned. The massive slabs of dense blue-grey limestone, four paces wide and hand-dressed by the quarry masons, were already marked by the dark, greasy smears of wheel-tar and the white, chipped scars of iron muleshoes. A six-mule freight team was crossing right now, their leather harness jingling cheerfully in the morning air, their driver whistling an upland ballad as his iron tires rolled smoothly over the level stone.
