For several minutes after Kezra laid down Nym Correl’s diary, nobody in the vaulted map room spoke.
The flame in Paxa’s horn lantern burned with a dry, quiet hiss, its yellow circle of light lighting up the scattered thick parchment diagrams, the stopped brass weather drum, and the white linen cloth sheltering the dead scroll-keeper’s brow. Deep in the bedrock below their boots, the mountain remained entirely still. With her right ear, Kezra caught the faint, rhythmic flutter of the draft entering through the distant window breach. On her left side, the world remained wrapped in that dull, cottony pressure that had become her constant friend since the Saltglass exchange.
Kezra rested her gloved knuckles on the dark larch wood of the drafting table. She stared at the red lines of Nym Correl’s blocked stretcher ramp. Then, a cold wave of recognition washed over her, so sharp and humiliating that her ears burned hot.
“I know this mistake,” Kezra said, her voice barely louder than the draft.
Fellis looked up from his knee-board, his pencil poised. “What do you mean, Kezra? You’ve never approved a Quarter parcel. You’ve never moved sixty thousand cubic paces of mountain.”
“No,” Kezra said, turning her head to meet his gaze. “I haven’t moved a mountain. But I moved four paces of clay and a limestone slab. I made the exact same total blunder seventy days ago behind my mother’s house.”
