The Old Work Survey Plate

The engraved brass plate on an Old Work survey instrument found below the Vandahl workings — a device older than the mine that counted the water's rise and fall long before the House dug here, in a maker's hand no one in the Vale can read.

A survey instrument of dark brass and cloudy glass, set on a stone pedestal the Vandahl diggers cut around rather than through — because it was already old when they found it. A geared face still turns a hair when the water moves, counting something, patiently, that no one asked it to count.

The maker's plate, engraved fine: a line of characters that are not House script and not Temple script and not any hand the Vale writes now — and beneath them, worn nearly flat, the one figure the diggers could read: a waterline mark, and a count beside it, and the count is far higher than the water has ever stood in living memory. Whatever made this measured a flood that has not come yet, or came and went before there was anyone here to drown in it.

Durgal wants it for the honest number on its face. Someone in Valenfeld's Listening College would want it for the hand that engraved it.