The gray light of dawn on Day 66 filtered through the open doorway of the crossroads way-shed. That turned the damp limestone flat stone slabs the color of cold lead.
Yseld Arken sat on an upturned nail keg by the threshold. Her hooked climbed staff propped against her knee. She held the seven genuine survey worksheets in her scarred hands. She didn’t read the map points with the hurried glance of a scout looking for road turns. She held the laid rag paper up to the pale morning light, examining the watermark, the bite of the dark oak-ink, and the distinctive slant of the margin numerals with a slow, chilling familiarity.
“I know this hand,” Yseld said.
Her voice was pitched low, barely carrying above the steady drip of water drops from the slate roof edges. But it stopped Fellis’s knife mid-stroke on his porridge bowl. Kezra stepped around the lime planks, positioning herself so her good right ear caught the guide’s words.
“Whose hand?” Kezra asked.
“Ulvan Dret,” Yseld answered, her thumb tracing the triple-notched chisel mark sketched beside an outside corner anchor. “Senior field map maker to Marshal Solvan Krail. He was fifty-two when I deserted two years ago. He’ll be fifty-four now. He has been Krail’s chief mapper since the company was just three regiments of hired blades running in the southern salt basins.”
