Rowan unwraps a corner of the keystone in the lee of the cart.

“Limestone. Holbeck bed. Fine grit. See the plane? It will sit the way it grew. Sandstone we used in the drain because a drain may be humble. This sits at the crown. If it is wrong, the rib is a rumor.”

He lets you feel the weight through the wrap. Weight is a number: stone is heavy, which is why it works, which is why moving it is a machine problem and not a hero problem.

A fossil comma. Kit would want to name it. Rowan does not. “The hill’s old animal. Not a saint. We don’t need it to be a saint.”

The ox blows. Woldminster’s towers—nave west, choir east, crossing empty—come into view like a sentence with a blank.

“If the cart sulks, we use rollers,” Rowan says. “If you snatch, we use bandages.”

Rowan makes you say bedding aloud. He makes you say weight. He does not make you say holy. The keystone will be holy later, when singers stand under it and do not think of Holbeck. Right now it is a tool. Tools get rollers.