The waterproof dispatch pouch lay across Len Vey’s knees, its heavy oiled calfskin scuffed, scratched. Then he stained with the soot of seven wards. The lead postal seal on the outer flap was dark with age, bearing the stamped mark of the regional transit power outside Rookvale. An eagle’s talon gripping a sealed parchment.
For nine days, that pouch had been Len’s physical purpose. He had carried it through the flooded drainage bypasses of River Ward, dragged it across the bitter salt flats of Salt, sheltered it beneath his body. Just then, the hunter threw him down the iron stairs at the five-mile cut. Then he kept it strapped to his ribs. Meanwhile, his bones were cracking.
On the parchment tag wired to the brass buckle, the ink had faded to a pale sepia. But the recipient’s name was still readable:
Chief Surveyor Edren Bale — Provincial Survey Power — Central Star tower.
Edren Bale had been dead four years before Len ever crossed the southern boundary canopy, his body buried in an unrecorded lime pit behind the depot while Morn’s clerks used his official signed name stamp to validate false claims.
“Ivara,” Len said, his voice cutting through the whistling mountain gale.
