Ivara Quill didn’t like margins that couldn’t be held in the jaws of a brass fine-scale measuring tongs.
She stood beside the ammunition crate on the cooling court terrace. She held her graphite pencil in her single right hand. Her thumb pressed the flat eight-sided wood against the yellowed rag paper of the working timeline sheet. The draft from the south tore at the edges of the sheet. But three heavy iron valve caps pinned the paper to the crate, their lead-sealed threads preventing the wind from lifting the corners.
Across the bottom third of the page, between two heavy upright lines ruled in indelible purple drafting ink, ran an empty box-shaped hall.
The left-hand line was stamped with the hour: 05:58:00.
The right-hand line was stamped with the hour: 06:17:00.
Between them lay seventeen minutes of unmeasured white paper.
“Look at this void,” Ivara said. She tapped the graphite point directly into the center of the space. Her voice was flat, dry as shale. He carried the sharp, authoritative rhythm she had used when running survey lines through flooded limestone adits. “This is where the entire nine-day operation can still fail, even if Chancellor Morn is lying handcuffed in his office and every dynamo on this mountain is silent.”
