Kezra dropped the rock shelf to join them. She carried the canvas sack of forged pitons and the two spare coils of four-strand mountain hemp. The chill in the service stair had settled into her joints. That made her fingers stiff inside her wool-lined leather gloves. Her left ear gave off its constant, muted drone. But her right ear was sharp, registering every scuff of boot leather and the hollow ring of metal against stone.
As she looked down into the dark throat of the stairwell. There, the old stone steps vanished into shadow fifty paces below, the familiar itch of her class abilities stirred behind her breastbone.
Reach Mapmaker. Completed Circuits: 25/44. Live Sites: 4/8.
Her mental ledger showed the four distant, living parcels glowing in her memory like embers buried under ash. In her mind’s eye, she could see the exact map points of Circuit 25. The small, sixteen-pace storage chamber she had surveyed yesterday in the lee-side stonework of the Needlehouse, and which she had right away retired to avoid trapping passengers in a blind stair. It would have been so simple, so temptingly easy, to invoke her bonded class power right now. She could pace out a temporary sixteen-pace Plot parcel across this jagged stairwell, spend five minutes driving copper nails into the fissures, and certify a static transit anchor that would allow them to bypass the entire sixty-degree drop in the blink of an eye.
