The clapping was slow, dry, and terrifyingly regular.
Each stroke sounded like the sharp, hollow snap of two pieces of seasoned ash timber striking together in an empty room. The exact sound Len Vey made when checking the stiffness of his delivery gloves before strapping a trunk onto a luggage rack.
Clap.
Clap.
Clap.
Across the wet cobblestones of the Tram square, the five hundred workers didn’t merely turn. They pulled back like a wave receding from a jagged reef. Men stumbled into the timber uprights of the parcel sheds, their shoulders knocking against the walls. Weavers dropped their scraper knives into the mud. The two kitchen girls tending the emergency beef cooking pots froze with their ash paddles lifted in mid-stroke, water dripping from the wood in slow, silver beads.
The crowd parted in a wide, clean lane that ran straight from the wooden staging cart to the dark arcade fronting the country bank.
The figure stepped out from beneath the canvas awning.
