Len Vey turned his head upon the rolled canvas pack, his eyes fixing on the rusted blade of the coal shovel.
The brass bell sat in the gray bed of coal slack like a discarded relic from an excavated grave. Its outer skirt was blackened with stone soot and scorched oil from the damper landing. The leather mid-air strap that Len had re-stitched with waxed linen thread three winters ago was burnt away to a stiff, charred stump. And along the flare of the lip ran the hairline fracture. The jagged, tiny crack that Deren had struck against an iron boundary marker on the northern pass twenty years ago.
For seven years, that piece of metal had been the center of Len’s universe.
When Deren had disappeared into the darkness of Rookvale. That left Len and Cira behind at the northern relay station with an empty flour bin and three unpaid hay vouchers, the bell was the only proof that their father had ever existed. It hadn’t been an heirloom passed down through legal wills or notarized inheritances. It was an ordinary piece of tinker’s brass, cast in a roadside sand mold and purchased for twelve coppers from a peddler at the Cloudford market.
