The dusk had frozen the thin melt-water that trickled from the upper gutters. That turned the limestone flat stone slabs of the Needlehouse courtyard into plates of dull, greenish glass. Kezra stepped carefully across the open terrace, her hobnailed boots biting into the frost. The air was so cold and still that each breath felt like inhaling ground quartz, scouring her throat and filling her chest with the sharp, clean scent of high-sky rock.
Behind her, Fellis walked with the end of the sixty-four-pace braided measuring cord held securely in his right hand. His braced left arm was tucked inside his heavy wool jacket. But his eyes were sharp, scanning the stonework corners with the practiced eye of an apprentice who understood how buildings stood against gravity.
“Where do we establish the main corner benchmark?” Fellis asked, his breath drifting white across the stone.
“The northeast cut stone quoin,” Kezra replied. She pointed her brass rule toward the massive corner pilaster of the ancient two-story map hall. “The foundation stone there’s keyed three feet deep into the subalpine bedrock. It hasn’t shifted an inch since the Survey Guild laid the first course three hundred years ago.”
She knelt at the northeast quoin, unrolling her bonded Reach ledger on a flat slate slab.
