The iron roof scuttle hatch clicked shut above the back kitchen chimney pipe. The kitchen settled into a heavy, choking silence.
The runners were gone. Thirteen-year-old Tavi Rusk and his four alley boys had vanished across the wet slate roofs like autumn leaves blown down a mountain gully. He carried ninety learned by heart addresses in their heads, four folded dispatches in their oilcloth vests, and four flat tin cutouts tucked into their bandoliers.
In the vast, granite-vaulted back kitchen beneath Track Four, the only sounds were the slow, rhythmic bubbling of the lentil cooking pots, the distant hiss of high-pressure steam leaking from a spreading joint in the ceiling, and the sound ticking of the three clockwork chronometers.
Len Vey sat at the dispatch table, his right hand resting flat against the pine grain.
On the shelf above the hearth stood the three regulators that tracked sky-high reality in a province where the city court had frozen the public dials at 00:00 twelve years ago. There was Doma Reel’s brass kitchen timer, its balance spring humming with a rapid, metal chatter. There was the thirty-pound cast-iron tram swinging weight control valve bolted to the stonework, its lead bob swinging with a deep, solemn rhythm. And there was his father’s silver pocket watch lying on the butcher’s paper before him.
