Tavi Rusk stood on the brick floor of the storeroom, his chest heaving, his thin woolen tunic plastered to his ribs with cold mist. He had an oilskin cap pulled low over his forehead. His fingers were black with coal grime from the chimney pipes. But his eyes were wide, bright, and fully steady.
He didn’t ask questions. He took the three tin silhouettes from Ivara’s hand. He held them up to the lantern light to memorize the cutouts. His thirteen-year-old fingers, nimble from years of picking coal off moving freight cars, traced the sharp edges of the triangle and the square notches of the bar.
“I can mount these on the roof lanterns in five minutes,” Tavi said, his breath pluming in the cold draft that poured down through the open skylight. “We have four relay posts between here and the Salt Works: the old grain elevator, the water tank on Fourth, the chimney above the bakery. The overhead frame over the canal. The sight lines are clean if the sulfur smoke doesn’t rise past the roof edges.”
Len stepped up to the boy, catching him by the right shoulder with his uninjured hand. His grip was firm. He carried all the protective urgency of a courier who had seen apprentices die on mountain passes because someone was in too much of a hurry to check their girth straps.
