For nearly thirty seconds, nobody on the western curtain walk spoke. The wind screamed through the stone crenellations. It whipped Krail’s dark wool cloak around his boots, while below them the sixty-foot roof of the cavalry stable gleamed under a fresh dusting of mountain frost.
Captain Hest Vale looked from the red chalk line on the sentry path down to the offending stable rafters, her brow furrowed with tactical frustration. “Master Dret, is what Mistress Venn says total? Can a royal map maker not declare an exemption for backup timber outbuildings under an emergency wartime relocation decree?”
Ulvan Dret pulled his velvet collar tight against his throat, his watery hazel eyes fixed miserably on his boots. “The... The royal class statutes don’t recognize military emergency decrees, Captain Vale. The Law of Whole Structures was established by the First Survey Corps three hundred years ago. If a mortised timber rafter or a mortared stone drain bridges the boundary plane, the ringing wave reflects as a cut load-bearing hidden gap. The notebook simply freezes. It’s not a matter of military power. It’s a matter of physical mass.”
Krail didn’t curse. He didn’t slam his fist against the coping stone, nor did he waste five seconds threatening Ulvan Dret with a court-martial.
