Stellan Gault sat on the bench in the repair bay. His knees shook so wildly that the tin cup of water rattled against his teeth. He looked from the blue-lined paper on the workbench to the tall, battered young man standing before him in the ash splints.
“I didn’t know, Len,” the boy stammered, his breath coming in ragged, painful gasps as he wiped the peat mud from his chin with the sleeve of his coat. “I swear by the stars, I didn’t know. The runner had your coat. He had the brass tube. He gave me the token: Cold doorstep, dry hearth. The words were right. He said you were at the central overhead frame, that your arm was bleeding again and you couldn’t make the climb. He told me to run to Foreman Marr with all the speed I had.”
“Did you read the paper, Stellan?” Len asked, his voice gentle, devoid of accusation as he rested his uninjured hand on the boy’s shaking shoulder.
“No,” Stellan said, his voice cracking with tiredness. “A runner doesn’t read the dispatch. That’s the first rule of the Tern Road. The seal was on the wax. I was running to the Quarry rim... But I stopped at the kitchen first because my mother is in the third bay. I wanted to tell her I was alive.”
