Up on the sheltered flat stone slab platform behind the Old Ferry pier bridge pillar. There, Eren Tal’s crew had stretched a tarred sailcloth awning to keep the midday downpour off the Courtesy Arch, the clock was ticking down through its final three minutes. The glowing oval between the curved brass uprights shone with a steady, clear sapphire light, framing the rain-streaked brick wall of the town depot yard back in Harrowby.
Ada Morland and Jo Saye didn’t bolt for the threshold in a panic. Forty years of heavy-duty trade work had taught both women that a rushed departure was how tools got left in the ditch and thumbs got caught in tailgates. Standing beside a wooden wash-trough that Tavi had filled with clean, warm water drops water and a splash of soda lye, Ada step by step scrubbed the gray pipe lime, black river silt, and sheep fat off her twenty-four-inch Stillson wrench and her brass-headed machinist’s hammer with a stiff tampico brush.
‘Always clean your threads before you pack your kit, Tavi,’ Ada instructed the boy as she dried the heavy steel jaws with an oily flannel rag and spun the knurled adjusting nut with her thumb until it ran free. ‘If you leave sulfur salt water from a hot under-road drain sitting on vanadium steel overnight, the salt pits the teeth by morning. Wipe the shanks with neat’s-foot oil, slot them flat in the canvas roll, and buckle the strap twice.’
