In the cold, gray twilight of Day One Hundred and Thirty-Seven, Kezra Venn walked out onto the stone ramp of the northern defensive berm above Alderfast. She carried the unopened brass dispatch metal tube from Kilnstep in her breast pocket.
Before breaking the wax seal or dropping into the basin to meet her brother, she had a forced duty to her craft that couldn’t be deferred by fear, family, or curiosity. Rule five of the master cartographic mechanics demanded that every pace of terrain linking her active destination at Empty Choir to her upcoming survey parcel at Stonewake Citadel must be personally walked, sounded, and timestamped within a nonstop, unbroken thirty-day window.
The high mountain descent from Empty Choir through the Windpit Throat and down the larch switchbacks had refreshed thirty miles of alpine ridge between Day One Hundred and Thirty-Two and this morning. But between the base of the switchbacks and Stonewake Citadel’s outer approach road lay a critical two-mile gap across the Alderfast northern meadows and the defensive stone barrier she had erected on Day One Hundred and Ten.
If she walked into Alderfast’s council hall tonight without closing that gap, those two miles would remain stamped with the old ascent date of Day One Hundred and Sixteen. By Day One Hundred and Forty-Five. Just then, she stood ready to activate the Horizon exchange, that two-mile gap would be twenty-nine days old—teetering on the razor’s edge of expiration.
