Ivara stepped between Len and the pruning hook before the boy could reach for his postal bond. She moved without haste, her single right arm coming across his chest like an iron bar, using her hip to pivot Len half a step behind her. She knew Elsi Marr from seven years ago. Just then, the Survey Office still kept regular check rotas and before the failed release operation had turned the central engineers into pariahs.
“Lower the iron, Elsi,” Ivara said, her tone level and dry as chalk. “We aren’t Pell’s court guards, and we didn’t come to confiscate the winter crop vouchers.”
Elsi’s eyes flicked to Ivara’s pinned sleeve, recognizing the mutilation that marked every survivor of Deren Vey’s team. She lowered the tool two inches, though her tenders kept their lanterns hooded and their leaded truncheons ready. The three men remained motionless in the shadows of the cloche frames. Their breath rose in thin, gray ribbons through the warm, damp air of the gallery.
“You brought noise with you, Quill,” the grower said, spitting into the loam ruts. “Word travels up the chimney pipes faster than your couriers walk. Pell has tripled the watch on the Gate, Bram Ash is lying in the Tram sick room with a hole in his shoulder. Now you walk into my terraces with an unclaimed boy who smells of fresh gunsmoke.”
