The Spring Shift

In Vael, geography is a season. Every year on the first warm night the land exhales and the mountains find new places to be, and the rivers go looking for the sea by different roads. By dawn the continent is a stranger. The old maps are good only for kindling, and the cartographers go out, as they have for six hundred years, to make the country knowable again before the trade caravans starve. Joran was the youngest master cartographer Vael had certified, and he carried that fact the way you carry a stone in your boot — aware of it constantly, never quite comfortable. His teacher had retired north. His rival had retired into the ground. The eastern provinces were his to chart, alone, this spring, and he had told the guild he was ready. He stood at the edge of the shifted land at first light, ink already mixed, and watched a valley that had not existed yesterday breathe mist into the cold. It was beautiful. It was also, he would later be very sure, watching him.