The leather case containing the North Relay presentation chart had barely cooled when Fellis Dain stepped into the back workroom of the community hall. The nineteen-year-old ropewright looked weary, with dark smudges of fatigue under his eyes. But his expression was alert and intensely focused. His left arm remained firmly bound across his chest in its linen sling. The fractured forearm was resting against a padded wool splint. At the same time, his right hand carried a large, flat sheet of rough drawing slate and a stick of sharpened white soapstone.
Kezra stood up from her stool, gesturing toward the cleared drafting bench. ‘Have you slept at all tonight, Fellis?’
‘There will be plenty of time for sleeping. Just then, the castle is sitting on the high plateau,’ Fellis replied with a faint, tired grin. ‘While you were up on the snows of Windpit and Empty Choir, I spent twenty days in this hall with your preliminary Stonewake survey notes from Day One Hundred and Four. I built wooden scale jigs of their curtain walls, measured their foundation footings against our haulage ropes. Then they walked the outer boundary ditch three times under truce flags with their master mason.’
He laid the drawing slate flat upon the bench under the lamplight. Drawn upon the dark stone in crisp, clear white soapstone lines was a detailed cross-section of Stonewake Citadel’s southeastern outer edge wall.
