Before following Adra Pike toward the central storehouses, Fellis Dain stopped at the base of the terrace steps. Then she turned back to look at the dark limestone notch of the southern gallery mouth. His young face, lean and wind-burned beneath his woolen cap, was set with the stubborn concentration of a Kilnstep ropewright who refused to accept a trail’s reputation until he had measured its turns with his own knotted line. His braced left forearm was bound tight to his chest inside its ash-wood cage, the linen wrapping greyed by quarry dust. But his good right hand held his three-foot wooden sighting rule and a small roll of greased chalk-cord.
“Cressa,” Fellis called out to the sentry, who had walked down twenty paces behind them with her unstrung bow slung across her sheepskin vest. “That pinch inside the gallery throat—the dogleg where the Coldwork gully meets the native limestone. Did anyone run a rigid frame through it before we crawled up?”
The watchwoman stopped on the dark grey rock riser, resting her palm on her hip. “We ran a mine litter through it yesterday within an hour of the dust settling. Adra insisted on testing the stone before we sent a single runner down the terraces to tell the cottages the south was open. When the mountain moved, half the young men wanted to run up the gully with their packs on their backs, but Adra barred the ditch with her pruning hook until we knew whether a wounded…
