Under the shadow of Stonewake Citadel’s outer drop-gate, the air smelled of wet lime, coal soot, and the cold draft rising from the deep mountain drains. Captain Hest Vale stood with her armored boots planted firmly on the dressed granite threshold, her gauntleted hand resting on the handle knob of her sword. Meanwhile, Master Ulvan Dret clutched his heavy, brass-bound folio case to his velvet-collared chest.
“You misunderstand your position, Mistress Venn,” Captain Hest said, her voice echoing off the curved barrel vault of the gateway. “This is an active castle of the Cairn Host. You’re a civilian map maker allowed entry under a royal parley. You don’t dictate which doors are unlocked. You don’t wander into our lower magazines because your curiosity desires it.”
Kezra Venn didn’t take her eyes off the iron drop-gate teeth above them. She held her jointed brass-shod sounding rod vertically, its rubber-tipped metal ring resting against the cold stonework doorstep.
“I’m not asking for a scenic tour of your guard post, Captain Vale,” Kezra replied. Her voice was calm, level, and unshakable. “I’m telling you the clockwork prerequisites of my class. A Step or Plot map maker can sometimes afford to ignore an unchecked cellar if the boundary runs across open pasture. But at Horizon scale—one thousand and twenty-four paces across, five hundred and twelve paces deep—the volume of living rock being exchanged weighs more than thirty million tons.”
