Len Vey unrolled the master parchment across the five railway stringers. He used the brass-shod feet of his father’s survey transit to pin down the four corners against the cold draft that blew through the platform shed.
The sheepskin was three feet wide and four feet long, heavy, stiff. Then he prepared with extraordinary care. Urel had scraped the hide with fine foam-stone until its surface was as smooth as ivory plate, ruling the margins with faint lead lines. Across the top, in Urel’s neat, upright stone-built script, the title stood out in jet-black drafting ink: THE ROOKVALE RESTORATION Promise.
Len dipped the split iron nib of the drafting pen into the stone well. He held the barrel with his awkward, blistered right fingers. His braced left forearm throbbed against his ribs, bound tight by Doma’s linen wraps. But he kept his stance balanced, his sounding staff braced against the iron pipe rim of the rail.
“We have spoken the technical truths,” Len addressed the sixty delegates. “Now we put them into law. This promise contains four articles. When your delegate signs, your ward commits its labor, its valves, and its lives to the schedule. If any ward refuses, you walk away with our respect and your people remain in the deep shelters with food and lamps. No man among us will call you a traitor, and no hand will bar your gate.”
