The candle stub was stuck to a flat shale slab between Kezra Venn’s boots. Its tiny flame burned upright in the still air of the lee hollow. Outside, the alpine gale thrummed across the high ridge like the drone of a giant spinning wheel. But beneath the sheltering overhang of the two erratics, the canvas tent was warm with the breath of four sleeping climbers and the faint, comforting smell of sheep fat and wool.
Voss was snoring softly on the far side of the groundsheet, his miner’s pick lying within arm’s reach beside his boots. Paxa lay curled in her sheepskin roll, one arm tucked over her satchel to protect her glass medicine vials from freezing in the night air. Only Yseld was awake, sitting cross-legged near the tent flap, sharpening the chisel point of her climbing staff with an oilstone, her movements steady and silent.
Kezra opened her ordinary paper field log on her lap board. With her brass dividers and bone ruler, she began tabulating the day’s paced measurements from the Windpit entrance stone base through the upkeep cut to the watching ridge.
Every segment had been checked twice: eighty-four paces along the snow saddle north of Windpit. Sixty-two paces along the exposed paving to the sandstone stone support prop. Ninety-six paces through the narrow upkeep cut with its four rock-cut bucket steps. And one hundred and fourteen paces up the final granite ramp to the watching crest.
