The pain in Ivara’s right wrist was a throbbing, rhythmic agony that seemed to synchronize with the sixty-cycle hum of the distant Star tower generators. She knelt in the freezing sludge of the quay, her single sound arm now useless, the hand dangling limp from a swollen, misshapen joint that burned as if plunged into molten glass.
She didn’t cry. She had lost her left arm seven years ago when an iron steam valve blew its bonnet in the dark rock chimney pipes. She knew the exact anatomy of physical ruin. She knew that screaming only wasted the oxygen needed to keep from passing out.
The double clamped its right fingers into the heavy bridle leather of her survey satchel.
Hookhold was not merely human strength. It was an unbending clockwork clamp that passed the entire mass of the claimant’s body directly into the grip. When the double pulled upward, the two-inch cowhide strap didn’t yield along the stitching. The iron tongue of the forged buckle snapped clean through its frame with a high, metal ping. The force tore the satchel from Ivara’s ribs with such violence that she was dragged three feet across the wet flat stone slabs, her hip slamming into the base of the river pier.
