Before answering Marshal Krail’s summons on the afternoon of Day 143, Kezra Venn pulled back with her team to their assigned workroom in the outer service court.
The room had once been a harness-maker’s shop. It smelled of old neatsfoot oil, cured bullhide, and dry pine shavings. A broad frame stand table of scrubbed timber stood in the center, lit by two tall animal fat candles and the pale winter light that filtered through a south-facing window. On the table lay the presentation chart Krail had demanded. A large, heavy sheet of rag paper sized with alum to prevent ink feathering, bordered with neat rule lines drawn in red chalk.
Fellis Dain sat on a low stool beside the hearth. He held an ink-stone and a dry block of lampblack gall-nut ink. With his uninjured right hand, he added single drops of clean snowmelt water, working the stone in smooth circles until the ink reached an even, oily consistency that gleamed with a deep blue-black sheen. His braced left forearm rested across his knee, the ash wood smooth and worn from seventy days of rough mountain travel.
“The paper took the alum sizing well,” Fellis said. He tested a corner of the sheet with his fingernail. “It won’t bleed when you draw the fine contour hatchings. In Kilnstep, Master Corve always said that a presentation map had to look crisp enough for a judge’s wall. Or the buyer would suspect you measured with a rotten rope.”
