Before Kezra spoke her refusal, she stepped two paces to her left along the edge of the limestone shelf, positioning herself where the updraught from the ravine couldn’t whip her words away. Her gaze remained fixed on the rolled calfskin metal tube Ulvan Dret held across the chalk boundary line.
“You said earlier that Coldwork Bench’s eastern check collar was open and dry,” Kezra said. Her voice was calm, deliberate, and entirely conversational. “You said the western drift was choked with timber and flooded sixty paces down. But that air still moves through the eastern collar all the way to the one-hundred-and-twenty-eight-pace reference plane.”
Ulvan’s eyebrows lifted slightly. He had expected an emotional outburst or a defiant declaration. This sudden pivot back to technical shape caught him off balance.
“That’s what I said,” Ulvan replied cautiously. “The eastern collar was cut into solid pale limestone beneath the nodular chert. The timber wooden props there was larch, not pine. It has stood for ninety years without sagging.”
“Tell me the surface map point,” Kezra said. “How many paces north of the southern quarry datum does the collar sit, and what’s the dip angle of the chert band above the top door beam?”
