Chapter 642: What the Surveyors Left Behind
Its intactness was the first wrong thing. The shelter wards were still running, four posts and a canvas awning, though the light in the posts had gone thin and uneven and would not last another week. Under the awning there was a cooking pot on a cold stone, and what had been a meal in it had dried into a hard grey crust that had cracked away from the sides.
A record ledger lay open on a flat rock, weighted at the corner, with a stylus beside it. The last entry was a column of measurements that stopped in the middle of a line.
Tools everywhere. Marker stakes in a bundle. A measuring chain half-uncoiled. Somebody's outer robe folded on a pack.
"No blood," Seraphine said, walking the perimeter. "No scorching. No broken ground. Nothing's been dragged."
Vyra had gone straight to the supplies and come back with a face Leon did not like.
