The small bookkeeping pantry behind Doma Reel’s communal kitchen was barely eight arm-lengths square, carved out of the massive sandstone foundations that supported the northern tram tracks.
The air was dense, humid with the steam of fifty bushels of boiling winter turnips seeping through the timber ceiling, and smelled intensely of old vinegar, salt water-cured salt pork, dry oat flour, and cold animal fat. In the center of the room stood an unpainted pine frame stand table, lit only by a single animal fat candle stuck to a dented tin saucer with a pool of hardened mutton grease.
Bevin Soot leaned over the table, his oilskin cape draped across the back of an empty lard barrel, his thick thumbs spreading three sheets of grease-stained paper across the wood.
The documents were official transit waybills issued by the Survey Board’s customs bureau at the Redstone Boundary canopy. The margins were covered in blue ink stamps, weight tickets for the thirty salt casks, and punched holes in toll receipts clipped with an iron three-sided punch.
Bevin tapped the central ink stamp with a blunt, blackened fingernail.
“The outward civilian lane is closing, Len,” Bevin said, his voice flat, heavy, and raspy from the morning cold. “When my freight wagon cleared the canopy at sixth bell, three squads of city court tunnel diggers were already anchoring two heavy bronze gate-bars across the outbound stone archway. They were driving four-inch iron lag bolts into the granite jambs with sledgehammers.”
