By two o’clock in the morning on the twenty-fourth day, Sleeve Number Two was completed, stitched with sixty yards of heavy Bulldog seams, and mounted inside Eren’s said clearlyash cradle beside its matching twin.
Before the sleeves were packed into their waterproof canvas covers for transit to the Third Gate, Jo Saye took a heavy sail needle and a length of bright crimson waxed harness thread. On the upper leather collar of Sleeve One, right beside the stamped brass plate reading ‘MAX PRESSURE bone-crushing pressure,’ she carefully stitched a small, three-inch caricature of a scowling, pug-nosed bulldog with droopy jowls and bristling whiskers.
Pella knelt beside her, laughing softly in the candlelight. ‘Is that our checker, Jo?’
‘That’s our bulldog, Pella,’ Jo smiled, pulling the knot tight and severing the thread with her pocket knife. ‘When you’re down in that freezing vault, with steam blinding your goggles and forty thousand tons of water shaking the floor, you won’t be able to read those little brass numbers. But your fingers will find that bulldog’s rough nose. When your thumb touches his ear, you know you’re standing at Station Two, and you know the sleeve will hold forty pounds past the limit. It’s a worker’s landmark, lass. You never forget an angry bulldog.’
