Abi rested both her hands on the parapet that abruptly cut off the end of Stonebridge road and stared down into the deceptively calm waters of the river below. High summer brought the lowest water of the year, and the slowest current. Three years and four moons ago there had been a bridge here; it had disintegrated, practically beneath her and Kat, and only her Gift had given them both warning in time to save the people who had been on that bridge at the time. Since that time, all the Master Artificers had studied the river in flood and declared that there was no safe way to rebuild that bridge—unless one was to create a bridge entirely out of sword steel, which was clearly impossible. And since that time, there had been a steady clamor from the people of Haven that the bridge must be replaced.

In one sense it had been; there was now a suspended rope-and-plank footbridge here, which could carry riders on horses, but nothing heavier, and which was far too dangerous to cross in icy weather. But that was not a replacement. People wanted what once had stood here, a substantial object able to hold the largest of wains and the cargo such wains could carry.

Not possible. The original bridge had been borne on the back of three stone half-circle arches which in turn had rested on piers sunk into the riverbed. The piers were still there; as Abi peered down at the water, she saw them beneath it, shimmering a green white, stone beneath algae, just under the rippling surface. But every Master Artificer said that the columns built on the piers had been the weak point, the place where the bridge had failed; that the thundering waters in flood and the debris they carried would weaken every conceivable bridge support built on those piers. That nothing could withstand the battering, the temperature changes season by season, the continued etching of sand and pebbles and even boulders and tree trunks when the river was in flood. That no stone, no mortar, not even supports carved of single pillars of stone, could hold forever. The bridge would eventually fail, probably without warning, and without someone with Abi’s singular and rare Gift to sound the warning, there would, when that failure came, be an intolerable loss of life.

Without the bridge here, Abi felt just fine. Better than fine, in fact. No shadow haunted this place for her. But she stood here studying the river, the banks, and the piers because she was not entirely sure all the Master Builders were right.

There had to be a way to bring a broad bridge here again. If only she could think of it. And she desperately wanted to think of a solution, because it was time for her to produce a Master Work, and this place, this lost bridge, called out to her personally.