The sound of iron crowbars levering thirty-foot roof beams echoed off the hard speckled granite cliff behind them as Kezra led the way along the northern curtain wall. Down in the western yard, Master Garrow’s carpenters were already ripping split-larch shingles away in broad, clattering sheets, the scent of crushed cedar and dry mountain moss rising into the freezing air like kindling smoke.
“Keep a steady stride, Fellis,” Kezra murmured, adjusting the canvas sling of her map case against her shoulder. “We’re not sneaking past their watchtowers. We’re walking a royal check route under the Marshal’s safe-conduct, and every pair of eyes on the castle walls is tallying how fast our boots hit the flags.”
Behind them, exactly ten paces back, four Cairn Host spear guards marched in locked rhythm. Their iron-rimmed boots struck the granite flags with rhythmic, heavy thuds. Their squad leader, a wiry corporal named Brand with scarred knuckles and a salt-and-pepper beard, kept one gauntleted hand resting casually on the handle of his short sword. He was polite enough, never speaking unless addressed. But his grey eyes darted constantly between Kezra’s fingers and the long brass sounding rod she carried balanced across her forearm.
“They’re jumpy, Kezra,” Fellis said under his breath, his braced wrist tucked inside the wool lining of his coat. “Every time your brass rod taps a drain coping, that corporal stiffens like he expects a potion-made charge to go off in his face.”
