The cold mountain wind howled down the three-pace alleyway behind Stonewake Citadel’s eastern service wall, snatching the corners of the unrolled linen map in Ulvan Dret’s trembling hands.
Four paces across the chiselled boundary groove, Guard Vane and Guard Kellen stood with their iron breastplates pressed against the limestone blocks. Their axe-spear shafts were held upright, their breath smoking into the morning air. They had heard the rustle of paper and the scrape of an ash cane. But over the whistling draft of the cliff, the quiet conversation between the two mapmakers remained a murmur of low, indistinct syllables.
Ulvan’s scarred left hand hovered two inches from Kezra Venn’s open survey notebook. His knuckles twitched with the wild, desperate impulse to seize the leather binding, to shout the four words that would shatter the green slate, to call upon the two guards to tear their tags from their wrists and preserve the army he had served for thirty winters.
Kezra didn’t pull the notebook away. She didn’t raise her sounding rod like a weapon, nor did she step back toward the protection of her companions.
Instead, she reached out her bare right hand. Her thumb pointed calmly to the second folded page of the oilskin packet Ulvan clutched against his ribs.
