The ring of steel against cold limestone echoed off the abandoned lime kilns, sharp and rhythmic in the early morning air. White flakes of chipped stone flew like frozen spray into the dead grass.
Kezra held the cold chisel at a forty-five-degree angle, her gloved left hand steadying the shaft. Meanwhile, her right drove the seasoned ash mallet down with measured, practiced blows. With every strike, the precise, sharp-angled V-groove she had cut forty days ago crumbled into rough gravel. First the northern cross-notch disappeared—the tiny, proud reference line she had checked against her magnetic needle—leaving behind only a jagged white depression. Then she drove the chisel edge straight down the center line of the channel, fracturing the rock layer seam until the delicate three-inch groove was nothing more than an irregular hollow in the bedrock.
Beside her, Maud shifted the horn lantern to light up the scar. In the broadening morning daylight, the pale yellow flame was almost invisible against the gray rock. But Maud kept her post, her face calm and unreadable.
“Don’t just leave a fresh gouge, Kezra,” Janno called out from the eastern rim, where he was working on the third corner mark with a broad dressing tool. His mallet blows were slower, heavier, sounding like dull thuds against the hill. “A clean, bright white scar in a gray limestone bank catches a royal land-mapper’s eye from fifty paces off. You have to dress the face back to quarry texture. Knock the sharp shoulders off the…
