The wind scoured the chalk ridge at sunrise, blowing cold grit across the limestone shelf where the old post road ended. Tomas Reed stood by the main datum peg, his ash pack frame resting upright against his shins. Between his boots lay the sixty-foot brass surveying chain, uncoiled in thirty links of hardened alloy, each link joined by brazed copper rings that had been tuned in the capital foundry twenty years before.
Nessa Vale checked the zero-pin driven into the solid mountain stone. Her fingers were gray with chalk dust, her wool mittens snapped off at the knuckles to allow delicate manipulation of the brass fine-scale screws. She leaned over the brass surveying scope, her breath pluming white against the bronze casing. Her sound tube rested against her jaw, catching the dry scrape of Tomas’s boots on the shale.
“The baseline begins at the royal road cut,” Nessa said, her voice even and clockwork. “Imperial Engineer Caleb Thorne seated this bronze datum plug into the granite fifty years ago. The cipher is intact: three crossed crowns and the benchmark notch. From this plug to Milestone Fourteen should measure exactly six royal leagues along the western ridge. If the land registry placed Milestone Fourteen in the salt basin, the chain will reveal the drift link by link.”
