From his perch on the narrow high walkway thirty feet above the drainage floor, Len Vey didn’t take his eyes off the overhead frame.
The pain in his fractured left forearm was a steady, rhythmic thrumming that matched the pulse in his temples. But he had pushed it into the periphery of his mind. A postal carrier on the mountain runs. Then, he had learned that pain was merely a measurement of strain, an invoice presented by damaged tendon and crushed bone. You didn’t negotiate with the bill while the mail was still on the road.
What he was watching below was far more terrifying than the throbbing in his radius.
An undersized thirteen-year-old boy, whose entire life had been spent in the windowless sub-cellars of Rookvale eating boiled turnip greens and salt-herring skins, was moving two hundred panic-stricken adults through a fatal choke-point with the cold, procedural economy of a royal road-master.
Tavi didn’t scream insults. He didn’t wave his arms in wild, dramatic gestures. A wagon stalled at the shift from the gravel to the timber apron. Then, the boy leaned down from the ladder and gave the wagon driver an exact, serious order. Take three links out of the left trace-chain. Set the hurricane lantern on the tail-gate, not the driving seat. The draft from the chimney pipes will blow the wick out on the seat. Swing wide into Siding Three. Siding Two took four inches of ballast wash ten minutes ago. The frog will drop your…
