High on the northern rim of the Quarry, Len Vey stood beside Geth Marr inside the timber dispatch office. He watched the paired messengers from Tram Ward deliver Doma Reel’s response.
The dispatch was written on a scrap of brown wrapping paper, bearing Doma’s clear, heavy pencil script and the purple beet-juice stamp of the communal kitchen:
THE KITCHEN HAS TWO MEALS. THE REGION HOLDS THE STOP. TAKE THE TIME Needed TO TORQUE THE BOLTS. DO NOT RELEASE UNTIL THE SINK IS COLD.
Geth Marr read the paper twice, his gray beard twitching as his thumb rubbed the rough beet-juice seal. He looked up at Len, who sat on a wooden stool across the table, his braced left arm resting on his knee, his eyes sunken with tiredness.
“She’s an iron woman, that Doma,” Geth muttered, folding the paper into his sheepskin vest. “A judge would have sent forty soldiers to seize our grain bins. She sends an accounting of her turnip skins.”
“She knows what an engine costs,” Len said, his voice quiet. “My father thought he had to bear the whole weight himself because he couldn’t bear to tell Cira and me that he was afraid. Doma doesn’t hide the fear. She measures it, she writes it on a piece of wrapping paper. She divides it among three hundred people so no single back has to break.”
