For two long minutes, nobody on the cut raised stone road spoke. The icy mountain wind whipped across the brink of Needle Gorge, tugging at the hems of their wool coats and whistling through the brass sighting arms of Fellis’s transit frame.
Old Orren leaned on his hazel staff. He looked from Kezra to the distant tower with an expression of baffled irritation. “What are you two babbling about? Windows are windows! The masons put them where they wanted light! What does the wind have to do with the bridge being down?”
Kezra lowered her telescope and turned to the old guide. Her voice dropped into the quiet, patient rhythm she used when explaining the grain of clay to an apprentice.
“Orren,” Kezra asked, “how many winters have you lived in these high passes?”
“Sixty-four winters, girl,” the old man snorted, bristling with highland pride. “Born in the lower slate quarry, worked the road gangs since I was ten.”
“In those sixty-four winters,” Kezra continued, “have you ever seen a master mason build four-foot glass casements facing directly into the western polar gale?”
Orren opened his mouth to deliver a sharp retort, then stopped. His weathered jaw slackened, and his watery grey eyes flicked back toward the distant tower across the gorge. He stared at the shattered window embrasures, then at the solid, windowless ice-breaker batter-wall that faced the calm eastern mountain nook.
