Two weeks later, the morning sun rose crisp and gold over the jagged granite ridge of Mount Sunder. The Free Quarry Cooperative was already humming with lawful, disciplined labor—the rhythmic clink-clank of hand-drills echoing from the gray benches, the smoke of honest forge fires rising straight into the calm blue sky.
On the porch of the stonecutters’ lodge, Tomas Reed sat upon a low cedar bench, adjusting the three-inch iron buckle of his calfskin wrist brace. The tendon injury was permanent—a thick ridge of stringy scar tissue that bound the wrist bones—but the joint was strong. He had soaked it daily in warm mountain arnica and river vinegar. Now his fingers bent against his palm with steady, reliable power.
Tomas inspected his ash-wood pack frame. He had oiled the leather shoulder straps with neat’s-foot grease, replaced the worn hemp lashings with new four-strand braided linen cord, and tightened every oak dowel pin in the frame.
Inside his courier haversack lay his new tools: the miner’s safety lamp, polished bright and filled with fresh colza oil. The heavy Swedish charcoal-iron friction clamps. And his iron-spurred mountain climbing boots, their spikes freshly ground by the village smith.
And nestled in the center of the waterproof oiled-silk pocket lay his master ledger. The twentieth seal gleamed upon its front page. A radiant circle of dark mountain iron and silver filigree, bearing witness that another unfulfilled quest of the realm had been carried to its lawful conclusion.
