The zinc tool crate closed with a sharp, metal snap that echoed down the quiet length of the bunkhouse.
Len Vey stood over the cut end-post box. His good right hand wiped a smear of dark lubricating animal fat from the threads of his sounding pole metal ring with a scrap of dry cotton. His left arm throbbed in its linen sling, the muscles along his collarbone aching from the tension of the descent. But the deep, bone-deep tremor that had rattled his joints since midnight had finally subsided into a steady, manageable dullness.
Beside him, Ivara Quill knelt on the floorboards, carefully wrapping the eighteen-inch bronze valve wheel in its oil-soaked burlap shroud. Her single right hand worked with practiced, economical care, her fingers knotting the hemp cord around the spokes without a wasted motion.
Around them, the bunkhouse had settled into an extraordinary, hollow stillness.
The green light from the emergency brass chandelier overhead was sputtering. Its six curved reflectors cast dim, fluttering crescents across the thirty-six empty iron cots. At the foot of Bed 19, and beside five other cots along the central aisle, the six mounds of cold gray limestone melted rock waste lay undisturbed. It was silent, powdery monuments to an office theft that had finally reached its clockwork termination.
