The wind coming off the western escarpment had grown razor-sharp as the sun sank toward the jagged peaks of the Spine, but Kezra Venn didn’t feel the cold. Her entire body had gone rigid beside her tripod.
Thirty-two inches.
A mismatch of two or three inches could be shimmed with replacement coping blocks from Voss’s quarry. A minor hollow of four inches could be brought within limit by bedding dressed granite slabs in stone dust. But a subsidence of nearly a full pace across two hundred nonstop paces of outer edge was a total, impossible to climb disaster.
Under Rule Two of Cartographic Mechanics, relative outer edge elevations between paired parcels must match within one handspan—roughly four inches—along every foot of all four edges. If the western edge failed by thirty-two inches, the bonded notebook would refuse sign-off instantly. The exchange couldn’t be triggered. Stonewake Citadel would remain unmoving in its mountain notch, choking Alderfast’s only exit. Meanwhile, the Cairn Host’s grain blockade starved the basin into submission.
“Check it again, Kezra,” Voss said. He stepped up beside her, his weathered face pale beneath his gray beard. “Maybe the red juice in the tube froze on one side. Maybe the glass is tilted.”
