The dispatch was not written on country office thick parchment or Survey Office parchment. It was written on a page of thin, blue-lined grid paper torn directly from the back of Len Vey’s personal courier transit logbook.
The page was sealed with red bottling wax. Not an official Survey stamp, but an impression made with the flat face of an ordinary iron carriage-bolt, the exact emergency sealing technique Len had used when sealing damaged manifests on the Tern Road.
Len unfolded the sheet under the yellow light of Doma’s animal fat lantern. Beside him, Ivara Quill and Bram Ash leaned over the workbench. Their eyes scanning the was dark, spidery script that filled the blue lines.
The text was formatted with rigorous, skilled care:
Working ORDER: QUARRY LEVEL FIVE FROM: CENTRAL DISPATCH COORDINATOR (LEN VEY) TO: FOREMAN GETH MARR / ALL WARD DELEGATES TIME: DAY 8, 05:15
THE WATER JACKET SPLICE ON LEVEL FIVE HAS BEEN COMPROMISED BY SUBSURFACE STEAM SURGE. THE ABSORPTION SINK CANNOT HOLD HEAD UNTIL DAY NINE.
BY Promise OF THE SEVEN WARDS, THE SAFETY STOP CONDITION IS HEREBY RESCINDED. GETH MARR IS ORDERED TO OPEN THE EMERGENCY RELEASE VALVES ON SLUICE SEVEN Right away, TRIP THE BYPASS GATES, AND VENT THE STORED SOLAR CHARGE INTO THE PIT BEFORE THE CENTRAL LENS BREACHES.
