The shout that tore from Len Vey’s throat was the loudest sound he had made since crossing the southern border canopy on Day One.
It wasn’t a cry of despair, and it wasn’t a plea for sympathy from the stone. It was a clear, clear delivery signal. A loud, rhythmic announcement that an uncompleted contract had reached its physical boundary and needed a relief crew to take up the line. In the quiet, stuffy darkness of Rookvale, where twelve years of citizens had learned to swallow their groans so the city court patrolmen wouldn’t hear them through the cellar grates, calling out for help was the most dangerous act of rebellion a man could commit.
His father had never shouted. Deren Vey had lived and died by the doctrine of silent endurance. The winter drifts reached the horses’ bellies on the high pass. Then, Deren had shoveled the snow alone until his heart stuttered. The postal franchise had run fifty gold sovereigns into debt. Then, Deren had mortgaged his own life rather than tell his daughter that the station was starving. Deren had treated his own mortal frame as the cheapest material in any transaction, convinced that a father’s duty was to be ground down in silence so that no one else would have to carry the weight.
