Inside the cramped, warm canvas of the wind-tent, the blue flame of the spirit-lamp cast flickering shadows across the faces of the four companions.
Kezra Venn laid her pencil across the open pages of her linen-bound field notes. Her voice dropped to a measured, deliberate rhythm that commanded every corner of the shelter.
“Look at the mechanics of my class, Yseld,” Kezra began, her fingers resting lightly on the open calfskin of her bonded survey notebook. “Under Rule Number Five, my book is fully copy-proof. Another land-mapper, even a Quarter Mapmaker like Ulvan Dret, can hold this thick parchment in his hands and see only black ink lines and dry shape. He can’t feel the living route impressions that my boot soles have woven into the rag paper. He can’t sense where my sounding rods touched the rock or where my anchors were set. To the outside world, my notebook communicates its destinations through two things alone: the scaled height drawings and the written names on the parcel index.”
Yseld nodded slowly, her hooked climbing staff balanced across her knees. “And under Rule Number Two, the physical shape can’t lie. When you execute an exchange, the two prisms must match in outer edge height to within a single handspan.”
