Ivara Quill pulled the battered copper drafting lamp closer. Its green glow pooled over the open sheets of Deren Vey’s survey journal.
“When your father crossed the ridge seven years ago,” Ivara said, her voice dropping into the quiet rhythm of a scroll-keeper reading a casualty ledger, “he reached the central office gallery on the fourth day of harvest. He found that Chief Surveyor Edren Bale was already confined to his quarters under armed guard, his instruments seized, his signed name forged on town transit authorizations. Chancellor Morn had already weaponized the Project Aurora shield.”
Len leaned his right elbow on the zinc table, his chin resting in his palm, his eyes tracing the red-ink lines that branched across the height section. Beneath his linen wrap, his stitched left forearm felt stiff and cold. But the sharp, pulsing throb had settled into a dull, manageable ache.
“Morn had seventy technicians working the claimant vats,” Ivara continued. Her single hand held her brass rule flat against the margin. “Every time an outside merchant, carter, or courier arrived with an unsealed milestone, the Survey clerks processed them through the booths on Gate Street. The milestone passed at midnight, the double materialized in the lower chambers. The office grid harvested twelve thousand units of high-grade current to feed the town tram lines and the private residential heaters.”
