“One pace too wide,” Kezra whispered. Her fingers gripping the was cold steel measuring tape against the stone.
Voss and Yseld hurried forward along the tape, crouching beside her in the fading twilight. The wind whistled shrilly through the western window embrasures of the distant cabins, but on this open rim, all four of them were staring at the single extra pace marked on the ribbon.
“A Horizon parcel is fixed by class law,” Kezra said, her voice gaining strength and speed with every word. “One thousand and twenty-four paces on each side. Exactly. Not one thousand and twenty-five. If this visible wall sits at one thousand and twenty-five paces from the eastern boundary, then this wall can’t be the true outer edge of Empty Choir.”
“Then what’s it?” Paxa asked, looking down at the paved apron and the low roof wall.
Yseld didn’t answer with words. She dropped to her knees one pace east of the visible wall, right where the flat stone slab apron met a seam of compacted turf and frost gravel. She took the chisel point of her climbing staff and drove it with all her strength into the frozen gravel seam.
Crunch.
The staff tip pierced two inches of dirt, then struck solid, unbending stone with a clean, ringing chank.
