The gray, rotten-egg dawn of Day Eight broke over the brick chimneys of the Tram Ward depot with the pale, sickly light of winter grease lamps.
Cold morning drafts crept through the gaps in the timber car sheds. That brought the scent of frozen swamp moss, scorched barley, and wet lime mud. Outside in the yards, four hundred displaced citizens—evacuated from the flooded river apartments and the dark salt barracks—were stirring on their beds of fresh oat straw, their breath pluming white beneath the vast iron roof beams. In the kitchen cellar, Doma Reel’s assistants were stoking the coke grates, boiling sixty gallons of chicory broth to warm the shivering children before the seven-o’clock shift whistle.
In the center of the brick repair bay, Ivara Quill unrolled a fresh sheet of clean, heavy white butcher paper across the scarred pine route table, weighing the curled corners down with four heavy brass pipe fittings from the boiler stores.
“Here is the vulnerability the hunter exploited,” Ivara told the assembled ward delegates, her sharp gray eyes scanning their exhausted faces.
Around the table stood the core leadership of the coalition. Bram Ash for the Gate guard post, his wounded shoulder bound tight beneath his frieze jacket. Doma Reel for Tram Ward, her canvas apron smeared with flour and wood ash. Hollis Fenn for River Ward, his mechanic’s trousers stiff with frozen ditch mud. And nineteen-year-old Stellan Gault for the Orchard glasshouses, clutching his wool cap in calloused, soil-stained hands.
