The second calendar day inside Rookvale was over.
The hands of the tram dispatch control valve had swept past the twelve, resting now at five minutes past the midnight hour of the third day. Across the vast, cavernous shed, the silence was broken only by the rhythmic, collective breathing of the eighty sleeping children huddled under gray blankets along the east wall, and the faint, persistent hiss of the dying chicory fire on the hearth.
Doma Reel had walked into the back storage bays to check the blankets and the window chinks against the rising northern wind. In the small drafting nook, Ivara Quill was leaning over an iron chest, sorting brass pressure gauge couplings and rolls of thick tar tape with her single right hand, her back turned to the main room.
For the first time since he had stepped beneath the steel canopy at the southern gatehouse thirty-four hours ago, Len Vey sat alone in the pool of green lantern light.
He sat on the rough pine bench, his boots planted flat on the flat stone slabs, his sound right hand resting on the battered thick parchment cover of his father’s survey journal. His left arm lay quiet across his ribs in its linen sling, the eight horsehair stitches throbbing with a dull, heavy pulse that had become the background rhythm of his breathing. The smell of pine resin, dried carbolic, and wet sulfur hung in the cloth of his coat. It mixed with the old cedar scent…
