Late on the night of Day 110. Meanwhile, the rest of Alderfast slept beneath the cold autumn stars, Kezra Venn insisted on rising from her cot. Paxa protested fiercely, arguing that three hours of sleep was not enough recovery after an eight-million-cubic-pace shifted weight. But Kezra stood firm, quoting the foundational principle she had established in Hushwood on Day 71:
A map maker who doesn’t personally walk her post-exchange boundary before midnight is a butcher who cares only for the arrival and nothing for the seams.
Supported on Davren’s left shoulder and Fellis’s right arm, with Yseld walking ahead carrying a storm lantern, Kezra limped out into the frosty night to conduct her Mandatory Post-Exchange Boundary Walk.
Even when a Quarter-scale exchange matches within half a handspan, the physical reality of moving bedrock always leaves scars. Along the one thousand and twenty-four paces of outer edge where the Northern Berm now met the valley defile, there was a nonstop, four-inch upright step where the newly arrived granite met the native limestone roadbed.
In daylight, a healthy walker could step over four inches of stone without noticing. But in the pitch black of a mountain night, that four-inch lip was an invisible trap that could snap a pack-mule’s fetlock, overturn a hand-barrow, or snap the axle clean off of a grain cart.
