The late afternoon light slanted amber and cold through the western shutter of the tool house, lighting up the fine drift of chalk dust, wood ash, and dried spruce needles that coated the broad pine worktable. On the stone hearth, a small fire of seasoned larch knots burned down to glowing red coals, streaming a dry, welcome warmth that eased the stiffness in Kezra’s calves and Davren’s reconstructed knee.
Across the table lay a fresh sheet of heavy, raw, unwhitened rag paper, weighted at its four corners by smooth river pebbles of banded dark grey rock. Beside it rested two reed pens, a bottle of boiled dark oak-ink, an ox-horn inkstand. A wooden sighting rule marked in tenths of a pace. In the corner of the table, Kezra had placed the brass-rubbed profile plate she had brought from Nym Correl’s Needlehouse archive, its cut cleanly three-stepped height curves gleaming faintly in the twilight.
Davren pulled his stool closer to the table, his ash stick resting against his thigh. He dipped the reed pen into the dark ink, wiped the excess against the rim of the horn. Then he looked at his sister with clear, unrushed eyes.
“We start from the northern terrace steps,” Davren said. “Where the irrigation water chute ends and the old wagon road climbs into the notch. For the first four hundred paces, the grade is one foot in twelve, paved with dressed limestone blocks laid by the old survey corps. That part I walked fifty times…
