Kezra Venn dropped to her knees on the cold limestone step. Her gloved fingers shook as she pulled off her right mitten. Then she pressed her bare skin to the fresh white rock-dust inside the carved groove.
The stone was cold. But the powdered pale limestone beneath her fingernail was fully dry, free of the grey bitter salt film that coated the older surfaces of the stair. It had been cut within the last two moons. Cut by a hand that wielded a narrow, high-carbon work blade with thin, precise strokes.
“Davren,” she whispered, her voice barely louder than the draft through the slit.
It was their private family cipher. The split triangle with a shortened left leg that her younger brother had invented when they were children playing in the disused clay pits behind Kilnstep. They had mapped the rabbit runs through the gorse scrub. Then, Davren had used the shortened leg to indicate an unchecked path. A question asked of the ground that had not yet been answered by a full circuit.
Beside the triangle, carved with the same sharp blade, a bold aimed arrow pointed upward toward a high top door beam that once opened onto the upper raised stone road ridge.
