The early afternoon light in the Trapped Court had shifted from cold morning grey to a thin, silver radiance that fell vertically between the eighty-foot cliff walls. She stood on the raised stone base outside the roofless survey hut. Kezra Venn unhooked her leather tool belt, slipped her muffled bronze sounding rod into its oiled calfskin sword sheath. Then she buckled the retaining flap.
Three paces away, Fellis Dain stood beside the brass sighting frame. His braced left forearm was held immobile in its linen sling. But his right hand held the double-barred wooden signaling paddle high in the air, its two black painted bars lined up with the cardinal spirit vein to confirm that all test sound equipment had been safely stowed and that no unchecked mass was moving within the sixteen-pace outer edge.
Kezra drew her pocket gouge from her pouch. She knelt on the grey limestone pavers at the southwest corner stake. She scored three crisp, three-sided anchor marks into the flat stone slabs outside the sixteen-pace boundary line: the permanent physical boundary datum of her twenty-fourth circuit.
Kezra looked down at her hands resting upon the thick parchment. The skin of her fingers was rough, stained with charcoal dust and scarred by sharp limestone splinters, but they didn’t tremble.
