Len stood before the large slate-blackened chalk board mounted on the brick pier of Track One. His sounding pole was held like an iron crutch beneath his right arm.
The panic that had choked his throat three days ago—the wild, desperate urge to strap a lantern to his belt, sprint into the dark, and offer his own life to the hunter in exchange for whoever had been taken—was fully gone. In its place was the cold, quiet discipline of a carrier who had seen three timber bridges wash out in a single mountain storm and knew that shouting at the river never brought a wagon across.
Around the table stood the inner circle of the coalition. Doma Reel with her flour-stained apron, Bram Ash with his wounded shoulder, Urel with his drafting tools, Melli Dorn with her charred kiln glasses, and Edda from the quarry. Her two broken fingers were bound in clean silk splints against her chest.
“The hunter expects me to come to the Ridge Road,” Len told them, his voice firm and level. “It took Ivara at the river footbridge because it knows my father died trying to rescue survey workers in the Year Seven blowout. It has read my stolen route book. It knows that every time someone in this basin gets hurt, Len Vey tries to carry the whole load on his own shoulders.”
