The runner who collapsed onto the wet cobblestones of the courtyard was young Stellan Gault, the nineteen-year-old orchard monitor who had helped haul the seed-grain sacks up from Greenhouse Four nine hours before.
His wool coat was caked in dried peat and white lime dust. His trousers were torn at the right knee where he had slipped on the switchback. And his face was smeared with black soot. In his right hand, gripped so tightly that his knuckles were white, was a brass courier dispatch metal tube, its leather lanyard cut by a clean knife cut.
“Dispatch from the Quarry rim!” Stellan gasped, coughing wildly as Bram Ash hauled him to his feet and dragged him into the warmth of the repair bay. “Urgent dispatch for Foreman Marr and the central crew! Brought down by the upper switchback runner!”
Len stepped forward, his sounding pole resting under his arm, his braced left forearm locked still in its linen sling. Doma Reel was already there with a cup of hot water. She pressed the tin rim against the boy’s chattered lips. “Catch your wind, Stellan,” Doma commanded. “Drink the water. Who gave you the tube?”
“The runner at Milestone Three,” Stellan panted, wiping his mouth with his sleeve. “A runner in a Tern Road coat. He had the leather courier pouch, Len. He gave me the token: Cold doorstep, dry hearth. He said the Quarry pumps were failing again. He said Geth Marr needed the emergency release order confirmed in writing…
