They stepped out of the cold darkness of the grain store back onto the sunny terrace apron. Then, Adra Pike didn’t pause to let Kezra’s eyes adjust to the glare. She took three long strides to the northern corner of the dry-stone wall. There, the terrace dropped away into the central ravine of the basin. Then he pointed her curved pruning hook toward the high notch where the valley narrowed into the Spine.
“Look up there, Mapmaker,” Adra said, her voice cutting through the midday mountain breeze with the sharpness of a freshly sharpened blade. “You moved a shoulder of rock to open our back door. Now look at the lock on our front gate. That’s where our ore goes, and that’s where our grain comes from. That’s the castle that decides whether Alderfast eats bread or boiled grass when the snow closes the ridges.”
Kezra shaded her eyes with her left hand. That turned her head slightly so her good right ear caught the distant, muted roar of the northern gorge. A mile and a half up the valley, seated squarely across the only natural cart pass out of the basin, rose Stonewake Citadel.
Even from this distance, the sheer, staggering scale of the obstacle struck Kezra with the force of an unbending wall. The castle itself—its square curtain walls of dove-grey cut stone stonework, its crenellated corner towers. The dark timber masts of its signal cranes—was huge. It was built to guard post hundreds of men and withstand…
