Ivara Quill climbed the spiral iron stairs that led from the backup station to the upper archival mezzanine. Her single hand gripped the grease-blackened handrail. Meanwhile, her hobnailed boots rang out against the cast-iron risers.
Behind her, the central core of the Star tower was settling into an unfamiliar, deep silence. The spark blast from the paired seals blowout had died away. The ear-splitting roar of the central discharge chimney pipes had ceased. And the groaning clockwork chatter of the broken-sun governor had locked into its resting stops.
She reached the third-level landing. Then she turned down the narrow service hall that led to the archive chimney pipe. The barred iron enclosure where Chancellor Morn had kept the province’s active claimant records under military guard.
At the end of the passage stood the heavy iron drop-gate. It was an emergency security grate installed during the first town seizure twelve years ago, its four-inch upright bars clad in lead sheet and braided copper grounding tape to insulate the archival cabinets from external magnetic shocks. An iron railway fishplate remained wedged into the lower runner track. That kept the teeth of the gate pinned three inches above the granite threshold.
Ivara paused five paces back. She lifted her copper safety lantern so its yellow beam swept through the bars into the inside vault.
