The leather portfolio was battered, water-stained. Then it darkened around the edges by grease from the drift lamps. It was fashioned from two stiff slabs of cured bull-hide, tied together with three turns of tarred hemp twine whose ends had been whipped with waxed linen thread. Davren laid it flat on the pine worktable between their empty broth bowls, his scarred fingers resting lightly on the knots.
“In this case,” Davren said, looking across the table at Kezra, “is every map, every contour sketch, and every height note I’ve made since I walked into Alderfast eighteen months ago. The southern drainage galleries. The lower ore stopes of Shaft Three. The eastern goat ledges down toward Saltglass. And the northern massif.”
He paused, his thumb rubbing the frayed hemp twine where it crossed the scarred bull-hide.
“I haven’t untied this portfolio for six months, Kez,” he continued. His voice dropped into a quiet, plain confession. “Because inside, mixed in with the honest measurements I took with my knotted cord, are the sketches where I copied old survey-corps boundary steles and let my letters imply I had walked the crags myself. There are sheets where I guessed at transit angles. That was because the wind was too cold to hold a weighted drop-line. There are drawings of the northern approach to Empty Choir where I shaded the cliff lines to look passable because I wanted to believe there was an easy road over the rim.”
