The afternoon sun hit the flat canvas cover of the handcart, warming the bleached hemp until it smelled of dry river weed and linseed oil.
Fellis Dain leaned over Kezra’s shoulder, his fingers smudged with charcoal from the morning tally. Meanwhile, Yseld Arken wedged the butt of her climbing staff into the turf to brace herself against the ridge wind.
“Let me hold the leaves,” Fellis said. He spoke into Kezra’s right ear, keeping his consonants crisp. His blunt, calloused thumbs held the fluttering corners of the decoy notebook flat against the pine cart bed. “Don’t let the draft bend the thread, Kezra. Look at that stitching.”
Kezra drew a magnifying glass from the pocket of her leather waistcoat. The brass barrel was tarnished from the salt fog of the lower flats. But the ground quartz lens was clear. She bent low over the open gutter of the binding.
Her original notebook—the dummy book she had hastily put together on Day 11 at Maud’s pottery bench before walking out of Kilnstep—had been sewn with cheap, three-ply hemp twine waxed with sheep fat. It was clumsy, honest work, the holes punched through the rough pulp sheets with an ordinary cobbler’s awl.
