The heavy zinc table in the center of the undercroft was wiped clean of pea mash, machine oil, and lead shavings.
Len Vey stood before the zinc-coated surface, his boots planted shoulder-width apart. His Surefoot baseline anchored his weight against the damp stone floor. His left arm rested securely in Doma’s linen sling, the eight horsehair stitches throbbing with a dull, steady pulse that had become the background rhythm of his thoughts. In his sound right hand, he held a thin, carbon-steel paring knife, its two-inch blade sharpened to razor sharpness on an oilstone.
Before him lay the packet.
It was a legal envelope of heavy northern rag thick parchment, ten inches wide and fourteen inches long, heavy with linen scrim and stiffened with thin birch veneer. Across the front, written in the black dark oak-ink of the Free Marches building corps, the formal courier superscription was as sharp and unbending as the day it was penned:
TO: Chief Surveyor Edren Bale, Provincial Survey Office, Citadel of Rookvale. FROM: Ansett Rill, Chief Consulting Master builder, Municipal Defense Bureau. CLASSIFICATION: Priority Clockwork Dispatch #418 — Emergency Load-bearing Locked deposit. CONDITIONS: To be unsealed only in the presence of the chosen receiver, an accredited guild judge, or three sworn civilian town witnesses.
