The command table in the upper land-mappers’ pavilion was covered in soot, dried tea rings, and damp fragments of charred thick parchment, but under the light of three brass lanterns, it had become the center of the world.
Tomas Reed stood at the head of the table, his wet woolen coat hung over the back of an oak chair to steam near the charcoal fire bowl. Beneath his coarse linen shirt, the muscles across his shoulders and back were knotted like hemp cords. His left arm was re-wrapped in a fresh, dry linen bandage soaked in warm vinegar and elder-bark oil that old Corin had fetched from the medicine room chest.
Nessa Vale leaned over the table, her measuring tongs and flat ruler moving across a large sheet of heavy rag drafting paper she had scavenged from a locked drawer beneath the map case.
Around the table stood Sile Rook, old Corin. The six apprentices, their faces shadowed by the flickering lantern flames, their eyes fixed on the lines Nessa was drawing with bold, charcoal strokes.
“Here is the shape of the disaster,” Nessa said, her voice clipped, devoid of all emotion, speaking with the total clarity of an engineer reading a death sentence.
