High on the iron lattice of the tramway overhead frame tower, eighty feet above the frozen slate roofs of Tram Ward, the sight shutter pulsed again.
Short. Short. Short. Long. Long. Chevron.
The green beam swept once across the wet brick low roof wall of the town cooperage, held for two seconds at the corner of Foundry Lane, and snapped shut into darkness.
Ivara Quill didn’t take her eyes from the skyline. She translated the sight rhythm without moving her lips, her experienced land-mapper’s mind converting the shape of light pulses into transit map points: Alley clear. Patrols engaged at canal switchback. Tannery carriage hatch unlatched.
“Thirteen years old,” Ivara murmured, her single hand adjusting the leather strap of her satchel. “And the lad holds his shutter angle against a twenty-knot crosswind without shaking the beam. That boy will be a sight land-mapper before he has whiskers on his chin.”
“If he lives to see the morning,” Bram Ash muttered. He leaned his weight against the left ash handle of the laundry cart.
“He will live,” Len said, his voice flat as an iron rail. “Move the wheels.”
They pushed the two-wheeled handcart out of the hospital delivery lane into the maze of narrow coal alleys that cut through the heavy-duty terrace.
