The sound of his childhood name—Lenny—hung in the cold air of the drift like coal damp in a stuffy heading. For seven years, no living tongue had formed those two syllables in Len’s presence. Cira had abandoned the small on the night their father had failed to return from the Star tower survey. It replaced it with the clipped, functional Len that belonged to two orphans managing a bankrupt postal concession with six sick horses and an audited ledger.
Len’s boots shifted half an inch forward in the sludge. His right hand came off the pine sounding pole, his fingers uncurling into the darkness between them. The face before him was flawless by seven years of grief. The skin across the bridge of the nose was firm, the green frieze courier coat had no lime dust ground into its seams. The brass numbering plate on the lapel—Carrier 04, District North—was polished to a bright, beeswax shine.
“Father,” Len whispered again. His chest tightened until the broken ends of his radius seemed to grind directly against his ribs.
“Get down, you fool!”
Ivara Quill didn’t waste breath on argument. She lunged backward along the wooden walkway planks. Her crutch splashed into the muck, and drove her good right shoulder straight into Len’s uninjured breastbone. The impact knocked him sideways off the timber walkway. His boots slid into the eighteen-inch ditch that carried the bitter-salt drainage from the upper chimney pipes.
