Bram Ash stood framed in the narrow doorway of the work boss’s office. His broad shoulders leaned heavily against the glass-fused white tiles to take the strain off his injured left hip.
In his calloused hands, he held three thick, calfskin-bound registers he had pried from an iron footlocker underwater beneath the floorboards of Bed 01. The leather bindings were stained with black mold and white lime scale, their brass corner-pieces green with green rust. But the parchment leaves inside remained dry, crackling like autumn leaves as his thumbs steadied the weight.
His gray hair was plastered across his forehead with a paste of cold sweat and crushed rock dust. His old court guard stave—the five-foot ash pole tipped with an iron crown that he had carried for twelve years as an officer of the Survey Board—rested against his thigh, its polished timber nicked and scarred from prying loose the granite top door beam.
“We have to move to the shaft, Geth,” Bram said. His voice dropped into the urgent, gravelly whisper he had used during the midnight bread riots of Year Six. “The drillers on Tier Two just sent a hoist runner down the bucket line. Bevin Soot’s supply wagon cleared the upper boundary toll twenty minutes ago.”
