Cold mist still clung to the lower cabbage terraces of Alderfast when Kezra Venn tested the strap of her canvas instrument case. Then she stepped out from the western tool house. Frost silvered the slate thin wedges along the path. Inside her waxed inner coat pocket, the leather covers of her bonded survey notebook held a muted, leftover warmth. The final day of the seven-day Quarter lock that had bound her class since the exchange at Coldwork Bench. By dawn tomorrow, the ninety-eighth day since she had crawled beneath Kilnstep’s drying-shed doorstone, the prohibition would lift. Today, however, her work needed eyes, a weighted drop-line. A clear sight across contested rock rather than an open address.
Davren stood waiting beside the dry-stone wall where the upper goat track left the cultivated terraces. He wore a thick sheep’s-wool jerkin over his linen shirt. The hinged iron straps of his left knee brace gleamed dull grey from the animal fat he had rubbed into the rivets the night before. His ash walking stick, carved near the grip with the split triangle that had guided Kezra across half the mountain range, rested against his boot.
Paxa Sel finished adjusting the buckle across Davren’s chest pack and stepped back. She held two fingers to the side of his throat. Meanwhile, she watched the rise and fall of his collarbone in the thin dawn air.
