On a crisp Tuesday morning in late October, five months after the restoration of the sky-high horizon, Len Vey stood before the public cedar counter of the Free Wards Transit Power in Rookvale.
The entrance hall was quiet, bathed in the amber warmth of mid-morning sunlight that streamed through the south-facing casements.
Len reached into his canvas courier satchel with his sound right hand. He retrieved an object that had traveled two thousand miles across mountain passes, through flooded sewers, and behind flaming boiler baffles. A tube-shaped dispatch case of heavy, oil-tanned steer hide, ten inches long and three inches in width.
The leather was dark with age, scuffed by granite scree, stained with grease from the tramway switching engines. Then it scorched along its bottom rim where a hot chimney pipe cinder had brushed it during the Day Nine release. The lead check seal that had closed the outer flap was long broken. But the tarnished brass plate riveted to the leather cap was still readable beneath the road grime:
Dispatch 418 — Regional Transit Board — Address: Chief Surveyor Edren Bale, Rookvale Provincial Survey.
Behind the cedar counter sat Ivara Quill, wearing her dark wool land-mapper’s jacket, her reading glasses catching the morning glare.
