Before the four soldiers reached the shadowy entrance of the northern gallery, one of the trailing scouts—a younger man with a red wool scarf tied around his helmet—suddenly stopped in the center of the courtyard.
His boot had caught on a raised line of dressed pale limestone set flush into the flags.
He knelt, using the iron tip of his short hunting spear to scrape away the crust of hoarfrost covering the stones. The white rime fell away. Then, the pale grey light of dawn revealed three deeply chiseled three-sided incisions joined at their apexes. The classical, hundred-year-old anchor mark of a Quarter-rank Mapmaker.
It was the boundary corner that Nym Correl had cut into the living bedrock during the construction of the Needlehouse in the last century.
The scout’s eyes went wide. He rose to his feet and yelled at the top of his lungs, his voice echoing off the high hard speckled granite walls: “Corporal! Halt! Look at the threshold!”
The corporal skidded to a halt on the lime dust, his round cedar shield raised. “What’s it, Krell? Did you find a wire?”
“Better than a wire!” the young scout shouted, pointing his spear at the carved stone triangles. “The map maker’s anchor! The Kilnstep bitch cut an active retreat mark right here on the flags! If we corner her in the gallery, she will fold space and swap her party straight back to this court!”
