The afternoon shadows were beginning to stretch across the upper terrace, throwing the long, serrated dark shape of the pale limestone crags across the newly finished stonework wall. A quiet breeze blew from the east. It carried the faint, dry rustle of salt bush and the distant rumble of the lower freight road.
Kezra Venn walked to the northern outside corner anchor of the counterpart terrace, three paces beyond the new stone low roof wall.
She knelt in the loose gravel beside the anchor mark. It was a crisp, three-inch three-sided depression cut deep into the native pale limestone, its inside faces smoothed with emery powder. He pointed due north like an arrow of steel. For ten days, this stone mark had hummed with earth-measuring power. It held sixty-four paces of shattered mountain cave under active class tension.
Around her stood the small assembly of witnesses. Joric Thane in his frieze coat, Master Quarrier Branden holding his iron foot-rule, Paxa Sel with her medical ledger tucked under her arm, Yseld Arken leaning on her hooked staff, and Fellis Dain holding his wooden signaling paddles.
Kezra unbuttoned the oiled flap of her haversack and drew out the Bonded Survey Notebook.
The leather cover was scarred by rock scrapes, darkened by grease and sweat, and smelling faintly of wood smoke and lamp oil. She laid the book flat across her knees, opening it to the sixth and seventh leaves.
