In the communal kitchen beneath the abandoned tram shed, three miles south of the Quarry, Doma Reel was scraping the bottom of an eighty-gallon iron soup kettle with a scarred wooden paddle.
Around her in the cavernous, lamp-lit cellar, three hundred displaced citizens—dockworkers from the flooded River apartments, soil tenders from the frozen Orchard glasshouses, and glassmakers from the cold Salt kilns—sat on wooden benches, huddled in blankets against the creeping sulfur chill.
Doma didn’t offer them an inspiring speech. She set the paddle on the edge of the kettle with a sharp clack, wiped her red, steam-chapped hands on her apron. Then she faced the crowd.
“Here is the arithmetic,” Doma said. Her voice carried through the low-ceilinged cellar with the flat, unsparing power of a supply boss accounting for rations under siege. “The Quarry had a broken pipe. The courier upheld the safety stop. That delayed the central release by six hours. Because of that delay, our food reserve has shrunk to two reliable meals for every working hand, and one meal of thin spelt gruel for the fever households.”
A murmur of fear and resentment ran through the benches. A salt-worker stood up, his coat caked with bitter salt dust. “Two meals, Doma? What happens when those two meals are gone?”
