Dawn on the ninety-eighth day broke thin, grey, and bitter over the northern throat of Alderfast. Rime coated the dry stalks of the terrace cabbages, turning the leaves to brittle plates of frosted glass. At the northern toll circle—a cleared fifty-pace ring of tamped mountain shale where the old royal road met the steep rubble ramp below Stonewake Citadel—twenty-four wicker baskets of washed lead spar and copper pyrites stood stacked in four neat tiers.
Kezra Venn stood twenty paces south of the ore stack, her waxed coat buttoned to the throat against the biting down-draft from the crags. Inside her breast pocket, the bonded survey notebook rested against her ribs, fully silent and fully cool. For the first time in seven days, the dark red bar of the Quarter lock had dissolved from its ledger page. The full reach of her class was restored. Step, Plot, Reach, and Quarter scales were technically open, provided she could find surveyed land, cut anchors, and valid consent to bind them.
Kezra knelt beside the lowest tier of wicker hampers, resting her gloved hand on the woven willow rim. The baskets were thirty inches deep. It was bound with peeled hazel hoops and lined with coarse linen sacking to prevent the fine, washed lead dust from sifting through the weave. Inside, the hand-picked galena gleamed like dark pewter in the dawn light, heavy and cold as iron. She picked up a palm-sized chunk of the ore, turning it in her fingers. The stone fractured…
