I set my coffee mug down on the chestnut table.
Admiral Mercer walked to my side, setting the brass transit down on the wood with a soft, steady clink:
“Arthur’s line holds true, Adrian,” the Admiral said softly.
Running up from the garden terrace along the shoreline trail, their broad shoulders square, their hand-welted leather field boots stepping onto the cedar decking with that clean, athletic cadence of honest young men whose spirits are whole, proud, and free…
Came my two sons, twelve-year-old Arthur and ten-year-old David Mercer.
The Master Wardens of Conduit Ten.
Alive.
Growing strong upon their great-grandfather’s stone.
Beside them walked Captain Garrett Stone, whole, proud, and smiling as he held a basket of fresh wild strawberries.
And across the hairline above young Arthur’s left ear, curving down toward his temple in an unmistakable crescent, was the dark wine-red vascular mark of his heritage: a port-wine stain shaped like half an antique surveying transit plumb.
