The wind had died down to a faint, freezing draught that smelled of old dust and cold iron as Kezra and Fellis knelt beside the bronze check grate. From the direction of the outer shelter, the soft scuff of boots over frost heralded the arrival of Yseld and Paxa.
Yseld carried her hooked ash staff and a long coil of light survey cord. Meanwhile, Paxa brought a second hooded lantern and a small heavy clay bottle of sweet almond oil to keep their measuring instruments from freezing.
“You’ve been pacing the outer edge for an hour,” Paxa said. Her voice was sharp in the crisp night air. “My ears caught the sound of your straight-line striking stone thirty paces down. Have you found the building parcel, or have you found an obstacle?”
“Both,” Kezra replied, standing up and dusting the granite powder from her knees. She pointed her brass rule upward toward the dark, looming dark shape of the raised cedar channel. “Look at the roofline, Paxa.”
Paxa tilted her head back, adjusting her glasses with a gloved thumb. The yellow lantern light caught the underside of the ancient cedar launder where it met the top stone ledge of the map hall’s second story. The trough was three feet wide, built of massive two-inch planks of seasoned heart-cedar bound with hand-forged iron straps. Where it met the building, an oak collar-beam rested on two carved stone brackets protruding from the stonework, secured by four massive iron lag-pins that had been…
