The hardest lesson of honest mapmaking was knowing the boundary between discipline and delusion.
Kezra Venn stood on the rim of Coldwork Bench, the freezing gorge wind whipping the skirts of her wool coat against her shins. She watched a small slide of loose shale trickle down the face of the buried northern step.
A lesser mapper—someone intoxicated by the newly inscribed title of Quarter Mapmaker in her book—might have fallen into the trap of believing that class rank gave her supernatural strength. She might have ordered her little crew to start digging with their two small trenching shovels, driving Fellis to ruin his healing wrist and exhausting Paxa until their hands shook so badly they couldn’t sight a sighting rule. They would have moved two tons of stone in forty-eight hours, collapsed from tiredness, and watched Captain Hest Vale’s patrol ride up the gorge to take them in their sleep.
Kezra closed her notebook with a sharp, decisive snap.
“We aren’t digging this with two shovels,” she said.
Fellis looked up from his map point board, his eyes clouded with anxiety. “Kezra, we have seven days of food. If we don’t start clearing the step today, how can we possibly activate before the snow comes?”
