Inside the dim limestone recess beneath the outer shelf, the name hung in the cold air like an iron plumb-bob suspended over a deep pit.
“Ulvan Dret,” Yseld repeated, her voice stripped of all volume, reduced to a dry, harsh rasp. “He’s fifty-four years old. He achieved Quarter rank with the southern Survey Guild twenty-two years ago, before the wars. Marshal Solvan Krail established the country military survey. Then, Dret took the commission as Senior Geodetic Engineer. He has served the Cairn Host for twelve campaigns.”
Kezra adjusted the strap of her bonded notebook, her mind rapidly cross-referencing every scrap of intelligence they had gathered since crossing the border on Day One.
“The Splitflint Hostel map,” Kezra said, her eyes narrowing. “On Day Nineteen, when the tavern keeper tried to sell us that fraudulent parchment depicting the safe pass through the gorge—the map that omitted the water tanks and directed caravans straight into the Host toll-gates—that map was drawn from genuine survey sketches.”
“Those sketches were Dret’s,” Yseld confirmed, her knuckles white around her spear wooden handle. “And on Day Sixty-Eight, in the Hushwood, when we crossed that sixty-four-pace clear-cut where two hundred ancient red cedars were relocated across the river and died on the dry shale slope—that was Dret’s work as well. He isn’t Sorrel. He isn’t the butcher who marched Corvan’s settlers into the salt flats to cover an office theft. Dret doesn’t torture prisoners, and he doesn’t forge transit permits to line his pockets. He’s something far…
