The tram platform’s three chronometers struck the zero hour together with a dull, iron shudder that traveled up through the soles of Len Vey’s boots. In the central valley below the terrace, the bronze bells of the Survey Office remained frozen at the memorial stroke of midnight, as they had stayed for four thousand three hundred and eighty days. But on the grease-stained frame stand table beside the dispatch rack, the brass swinging weight control valve, Doma Reel’s cast-iron kitchen timer, and Len’s own nickel-plated pocket watch all lined up to the exact, unforgiving second.
Across the gravel yard, thirty workers from the seven wards stood motionless beneath the hooded copper lamps. Their breath plumed white and stiff in the stale, rotten-egg chill that always settled into the valley basin. Just then, the chimney exhaust from the Salt kilns met the wet river fog.
Len sat on an overturned tool chest made of iron-strapped fir, his knees pulled together to support the weight of his left arm. The limb was bound between two rigid splints of split ash, the rough linen wrap discolored with dried yellow seep from the compound fracture he had suffered thirty hours earlier in the cobblestone lane outside the Survey dispatch depot. His sling had been hitched high against his chest bone with double-twisted hemp cord to prevent the crushed radius from grinding against itself whenever he shifted his balance. Every shallow breath pulled at the bruised joint padding of his ribs. It sent a cold…
