At three hundred and fifty feet, the fluted classical pilasters that adorned the lower tiers gave way to a sheer, unbroken cliff of plain cut stone marble, interrupted only by narrow arrow-slits that lit the dark inside spiral stair.
Here, high above the highest rooftop in the kingdom, the silence was broken only by the nonstop, deep-throated roar of the estuary wind and the rhythmic, hollow clack-clack of Nessa Vale’s brass sounding hammer against the stone.
She hung forty feet out from the nearest stone support prop, suspended in her oak chair. Her feet braced was wide against the upright marble face. With every blow of the three-ounce hammer, she tilted her head. She pressed the dual-cone receiver of her hearing horn directly against the stone four inches from the point of impact.
Tink.
“Solid,” she muttered, her breath freezing on the brass casing of her horn. “Granite backing block. Bedded true.”
She pushed her chair four feet to the right using the friction of her boot-heel, tapped again.
Tink.
“Solid. Good lime.”
