Chapter 21: The Lower Course

Sera Quill set the point of her load screw on the seat course and leaned on the handle. The note that came back was dull and even. She wrote it down, moved a pace along the corridor mouth, and set the point again. Ilan stood against the western pier with his back to the grey column and his boots on the bond. Warm air drifted out of the nursery corridor behind her, mineral and faintly sour, and under it ran the wet-brick smell of the breach. Overhead the beam he had drawn out of the pier three days ago crossed the west bay in one grey span to the corridor lintel. Under its far end lay the lower course, a seat of living stone across the corridor mouth, four paces wide and pale where he had shaped it. Three nights now the lobby door had leaned on his ribs, once…