Ivara Quill stepped to the backup telegraph console bolted against the western granite wall of the station. Her single hand settled over the cold bronze grip of the main trip lever with the gut familiarity of a master mechanic testing the lash on an overhead crane.
She didn’t need to consult the linen schematics pinned to the survey board. For twenty-four months prior to the total failure seven years ago, Ivara had walked every linear foot of these underground galleries with a land-mapper’s transit, a brass line-weight-bob, and a four-pound steel hammer. She had drafted the height profiles of the central sight steam cooler with her own ink and ruling pen, calculating the spreading tolerances of the dark rock arches and the heat fading away rates of the lower drainage chimney pipes long before Chancellor Morn had converted the work-yard into an office extortion engine.
Behind her, lying on the pine stretcher propped with horse blankets, Len Vey drew his breath in shallow, measured sips through his teeth. The linen webbing Edda had cinched around his thorax held his sixth and seventh ribs locked into their broken beds. But every heartbeat sent a dull, throbbing shock through his right side. His left arm was rigid in ash wood. His right wrist lay limp on the wool blanket like an ungreased pulley, swollen and bruised black from the double’s Hookhold. Across the room, Edda stood with her lead mallet braced against her thigh, her soot-stained knuckles white with tension as she…
