Kezra didn’t move the wooden sighting rule. Keeping her left palm pressed flat on the back of the boxwood strip so the brass vanes stayed lined up with the true north-south spirit vein of the ancient bench, she beckoned Fellis closer with two fingers of her right hand.
“Sight down the western edge, Fellis,” she said quietly. “Follow the dressed bedrock curb from the northwestern corner tower southward toward the service yard, and tell me what you see sixty paces south of the sally port.”
Fellis shifted forward on his knees. He tucked his braced left forearm safely against his sheepskin vest. Meanwhile, he steadied the front end of the rule with his right thumb. He closed one eye and squinted through the rear slit. For five seconds he was silent, his lips moving soundlessly as he counted the stonework bays along the outer curtain wall. Then he let out a low, appreciative whistle through his teeth. An old ropewalk habit when a timber framer cut a wood slot two inches off the plumb mark.
“They built right over the step,” Fellis said. “That long, low building with the split-larch roof shingles and the hay-loft dormer—it’s bolted flush into the outer western face of the curtain wall, and its stone foundation wall runs at least ten or twelve paces west of the old survey-corps curb.”
