Lying flat on the granite crest of the eagle’s-nest with her elbows wedged into a shallow depression, Kezra Venn held her brass spyglass steady against her right cheekbone. Five hundred feet below, the Needlehouse service court lay spread out like a stone-built diagram inked in torchlight.
The sun had sunk beneath the western notch, throwing the gorge into a deep, purple twilight. But the courtyard flags were lit up by four iron pitch-fire bowls set at the corners of the main gate. Around the fire bowls, Captain Hest Vale’s soldiers were moving with practiced military discipline, leading six pack mules out through the northern archway and clearing every loose halter and nosebag from the central flags.
In the center of the court stood Ulvan Dret.
He had removed his heavy outer wool coat, working now in a dark leather land-mapper’s jerkin with his ash leveling staff propped against a water trough nearby. In his hands he held his own bonded survey notebook—its brass clasps gleaming dull gold in the firelight. Around him on the stones sat a corded stack of twelve heavy wooden supply crates, four iron pick-boxes, and two tarred canvas archive chests that Hest’s troopers had carried out of the lower Needlehouse anteroom that morning.
