Mid-morning light filtered into the narrow alley between the bakehouse and the third-company barracks. It caught the thick, fragrant steam billowing from the bakery’s lower intake grates. The heat from the four brick bread ovens radiated through the foundation walls, melting the morning frost on the alley cobbles into dark, greasy rivulets that trickled toward the central gutter.
Kezra remained on one knee in the slush, her brass sounding rod angled down into the exposed gap where the bakery cellar foundation locked into the barracks stone base.
“Hold the sighting staff against that upper top door beam, Fellis,” Kezra said. Her voice quiet but was sharp with technical focus. “I need the upright plane from the roof edges down through this cellar footing.”
Fellis braced the painted wooden staff against the wet brickwork with his good shoulder. He held the weighted drop-line steady despite the icy draft that channeled through the alley. “Line weight is dead center over the joint, Kezra. The stonework is bonded. Look at those level bond-stones—they’re three feet long, laid header-and-stretcher right through the party wall.”
“It’s worse than bonded,” Kezra said. She leaned closer with a small iron scraper to probe the dark lime mortar. “The bakery’s smoke chimney pipes don’t exhaust through independent chimneys. They vent into the massive central stone chimney breast of the third-company barracks to draw heat up into the soldiers’ sleeping quarters on the second floor. The two buildings share nonstop load-bearing stonework from four feet below the cobbles all…
