The grease-lamp resting on the corner of the zinc cutting table flickered against the raw pine planks of the kitchen partition. Every puff of cold draft from the freight tracks set the flame shuddering in a halo of yellow smoke, throwing oily shadows across the sacks of dry turnip meal stacked three deep against the wall.
Len sat with his left arm bound rigidly across his ribs in two curved ash splints. Doma Reel had tightened the linen wraps eighteen hours ago after the extraction in the quarantine cut. She drew the cord until his pulse beat like a trapped moth against the bruised radius. Every shallow breath drew a line of hot salt through his collarbone down to the wrist. The bone had snapped with a dry, splintering crack. Just then, the iron wooden wall railing gave way under the surge of the crowd. The swelling had turned the flesh around the splints into a tight, dark collar of purple and ochre.
Across the zinc sheet, Urel set down an oilskin bundle crusted with rusted copper powder. The green rust had dried into hard ridges along the folds, shedding tiny bitter flakes that smelled of river acid and wet iron. The wax on the outer knot was stamped with the obsolete three-sided cipher of the Third Municipal Survey. The office mark retired the winter the war engine died beyond the northern hills.
