The sea was grey enough that Sera looked for the boat by its movement rather than its colour. It eased away from the pier, paused within the ordinary working water and continued after the crew's check. She waited for the accepted departure notice before opening the count.
It was the two hundred and eighth morning. Yesterday's preparations had left the target sheets ready, the separate adult assignments confirmed and the instruments checked. None of that had prevented the captain from examining this morning's wind again.
Nume accepted the limited harbour voyage. Thirteen departures; eleven completed limited round trips. Captain, separate adult crew, sea observer and the adult retaining position at each reading went aboard. The assigned land observer stayed at the permitted ground position. Sera stayed in the lower chair with her knee supported, and the officer retained the comparison.
Both clear reserves remained boxed. No lightstone would hold the boat's position for this question. The captain would work within the accepted harbour stretch and could end before a dark line finished showing itself.
The first account described the bright surface. It was narrower from sea than in the land drawing. Beneath it the first small step could be distinguished by its relation to the vertical mark. Two further interruptions appeared along the same seen face.
Land could distinguish the first step. The others ran into reflected water.
Sera put a short mark in her own waiting column. The boat had not arrived to prove the drawing right. It had arrived to let one particular eye look. The second eye had the same right to say no.
The pale drifting piece from the last voyage was not seen. Neither observer called that an absence from the whole rock. It had supplied no fixed target, and today's questions did not depend on finding it again. Sera was surprised by how much less she wanted it now that it had moved.
The sea observer described a thin dark turn beside the bright surface, corresponding in position to the land account from two days earlier. Corresponding was still a question until both present eyes could identify it. The captain reported the remaining work period. The boat would not come closer.
A wash crossed the face. From the lower room Sera saw only the distant sea change tone; she could not see the little wash that mattered. She eased her hand out of its tight grip on the pencil. She had brought an extra sheet today, but the paper's supply could not become the crew's time.
Tio sat nearby for a short while, sorting his own drawings. He asked whether the sea would be clearer if the sun came out.
“Sometimes. Sometimes it makes the wet face harder to separate.”
“So the sun doesn't read your instructions.”
“Not once.”
He grinned. His finger stayed resting. The observer needed neither a paper boat nor another helper assigned from this chair.
The next land account changed the question. The reflected brightness had shifted enough to distinguish the second interruption. Farther along, a third dark mark appeared, but its far side was still hidden by the foreground. The observer could not call all three notches yet.
The sea observer could describe the third mark's far side. It turned inward under a small projecting lip. Sera wanted to ask under what. Instead she asked whether the land eye could distinguish that same lip from the foreground overlap.
The answer took time.
She heard ordinary work outside the room: a bucket set down, someone asking for the path to be kept clear, the mason's tools striking the repair board. A person's hammer could stop at the end of the wall they had agreed to repair. Her sea kept putting the next task a finger's width beyond the last.
The officer read the returning account aloud. Land could now separate the small lip by its relation to the second mark and bright face. Beneath it the third mark turned inward. The observer described the sequence back toward the first shared step, rather than giving a number and hoping it belonged to the same object.
From sea, the order matched: first step, second interruption, third inward turn beneath the lip. Both distinguished the same third mark at the accepted comparison instant. Instrument condition, actual boat position and the time retained by the separate adult accompanied the readings. The officer checked those before accepting the limited new reference.
Sera let out a breath. Her next one shook a little, which irritated her. A small dark turn had acquired the weight of an answer because she had wanted it for days. She could be pleased without making it larger.
“The third mark turns under the projecting lip,” she said. “Its inner end is unseen.”
The officer confirmed the wording.
The line beside the bright face could be followed for a short stretch from both positions too. It did not close a square. Waves and the overlap hid the lower continuation. They retained the visible change of direction separately, without calling it a fitted slab or a made gauge. The mason's questions still required evidence about surface and boundaries they did not yet have.
Then Nume called the end. Water at the allowed position had begun to change in a way the captain would not spend the return margin waiting through. The observer secured the record. The land eye ended. The boat turned without attempting to follow the dark mark inward.
For once, Sera's first thought was not the unused question. It was the adult aboard lifting the paper clear of spray. The reference existed because somebody had looked from that moving hull. It would reach her because the hull came back.
She closed the blank line for another reading. Reason: captain ended for return conditions. Not failure to complete a square.
The boat's reception was confirmed before the midday meal. Thirteen departures and twelve limited round trips were complete. Adults, equipment and boat were back. No one had touched the rock, collected the drifting piece or entered the hollow. No passenger route had been added by seeing a new mark.
Nume arrived after their handover and asked whether she had eaten. She had waited too long again.
“Then tell me over food,” they said.
She described the third mark. It turned inward, so the old desire to keep lengthening a lower line had been asking in the wrong direction. Not necessarily wrong forever: the hollow's bottom still mattered. But this mark disappeared under a lip instead of providing a visible descent.
“Will the next question ask me to put the boat underneath it?”
“No.”
“Good. It would dislike the fit.”
She laughed. There was no close approach or entry plan waiting behind the diagram. First she would examine what the two views could establish without contact, then ask the officer what expertise and access a further question would actually require. Nume's boat was not the automatic answer to something concealed.
They ate, and she asked how the return had felt. Nume described the wind at their own end of the work. She did not turn that account into a certification of the instrument. They did not turn her pleasure into a promise of another departure.
After lunch the shareable sketches arrived. In the new comparison, the third mark curved beneath a little solid projection. Beyond it the observer had left paper untouched. The white blank looked nearer than the blank at the groove's lower end, though nothing on the page supplied a distance.
Sera turned the sea sketch toward its recorded eye before reading it. That small movement prevented the old easy mistake. She retained the separate orientation explanation rather than copying an oblique face as a flat chart.
Varen examined the page downstairs, his right leg comfortable. He followed the marked sequence with a finger held above the paper.
“You found the edge of what you can see.”
“And one turn I couldn't see before.”
He nodded. She asked whether she could keep that exchange in her personal notes. He agreed to the words. No old confession or private relief had been carried into the conversation, and his own shortened copy remained unchanged in its folder.
The mason's unfinished square lay under the new drawing. Sera sent a scoped request through the officer: could they review the present descriptions at an agreed time and say what a noncontact comparison might still distinguish? That was a request, not a fresh commission or permission to inspect the rock. No answer came before evening.
Miran heard that the boat had returned. Their own eaves inquiry had no new reply; all twenty residents remained at Roan. She gave them the short present result only when asked. A dark mark had turned under a lip. It supplied neither a date on their photograph nor a way home.
“That sounds as if the rock keeps its own cupboard,” they said.
“It may be a seam.”
“Then don't tell it I said cupboard.”
She laughed, asking no more of the comparison than the joke offered.
Before sunset she sat with Nume on the comfortable side of the table. She asked for their hand and they agreed. Her knee still ached; their sleeve smelled faintly of washed rope. The sea had given them no special exemption from their bodies. They rested anyway.
The late record kept thirteen departures and twelve limited round trips. Both reserve lightstones stayed clear and unused, the clapper absent. The upper edge had gained a more exact sequence of marks and a new limited reference; the lower end remained unread. Neither the submerged light nor the old network's full history had explained itself.
At night Sera opened the sheet once more. She had come looking for the end of a groove and found a line that went out of sight sideways. Tomorrow's first question would go to the mason, not the pier. If the dark turn continued behind the lip, what could they learn without putting a person where neither eye had yet been able to follow?