Felix admired the lamp fitting as if it might have arrived to congratulate him.
“Sticking contact,” he said. “It keeps taking supply after the light goes out.”
Tamsin put the disconnected copper in his left hand.
He looked at the empty socket, then at her.
“You removed it.”
“Twenty minutes ago. Supply shut before that.”
He turned it over. The warmth remained.
“A sticking contact would be an incomplete explanation.”
“A very tidy one, though.”
Jian held two fingers near the exposed ring, without touching it.
“Return pressure. From farther along.”
“Then we follow it,” Tamsin said.
Felix glanced toward the yard, where the rack stopped neatly at its mark. He had enjoyed a successful morning. She didn’t begrudge him that, but the lamp keeper had watched her remove the fourth fitting in as many months and asked whether this one would last until supper.
They took the service path down. Pell remained at the cottage with Barnaby, sorting the last labels beside the closed maintenance index. There would be enough carrying and climbing without finding a safe place for a child at every stop.
At the lower stair, the lamp keeper waited beneath an empty bracket.
“I need a light tonight. People come down with babies. They can’t hold a rail and a baby and a lantern.”
“You will have one,” Tamsin said.
“People keep saying the lamp’s repaired.”
“I’m not saying that yet.”
She arranged an ordinary oil lamp on a secure hook and hired an attendant to tend it during the test. The keeper checked the hook, satisfied herself that the flame couldn’t reach the awning and finally brought out the old maintenance key.
Felix watched the attendant count his coins.
“We haven’t measured anything yet.”
“We have a stair people can still use,” Tamsin said.
The old diagram put the next contact beneath a straight stone run. The actual route went through somebody’s kitchen.
A woman answered the door with flour on her sleeve. Her cooking fire was out, but she still had bread to finish.
“That’s a permitted extension,” she said before Tamsin had opened the tool bag.
“I need the removable hearth plate. Not the wall.”
The woman looked at the folded diagram.
“They all bring that one. The plate’s behind the stool.”
Tamsin asked what time the fire had to be relit. They agreed on a short access window and compensation for the delayed cooking. Lyra wrote the arrangement on the job sheet while the woman moved the stool.
Under the lifted plate, the copper route bent away from the old line, patched around a newer foundation block. The exposed contact was warm.
Felix attached his instrument lead where Tamsin indicated. He could measure what was here, not what ran through the solid wall beyond it.
“More than the lamp end,” he said.
Jian held the little test flow while she checked the joint. The patch itself was sound. Whoever had altered the route knew how to join copper, even if the register hadn’t kept up.
Tamsin marked the bend on the drawing.
The woman stood with her bread board against her hip.
“You putting it back?”
Tamsin reseated the plate before answering. “Exactly as we found it.”
The woman kept checking the bread board while they worked. Tamsin recognized the glance. She had made it herself whenever a customer occupied the bench needed for the next paid job.
“Two more readings,” she said.
Felix lifted the lead, waited and replaced it at the same contact. The second result matched closely. He asked whether there was access through the next cupboard.
“No cupboard,” the woman said. “That’s the chimney.”
He folded the old drawing so the nonexistent cupboard disappeared.
Tamsin checked the plate’s underside before closing it. The brick lip had a chipped corner. She shifted the cover onto its sound seats, made sure it lay flat and asked the woman to test it with an empty pan before relighting anything.
The pan stood level.
The woman accepted the agreed compensation, then pointed them toward the next access.
“Ask before you lift his tub. He’s touchy about it.”
“About the tub?” Felix asked.
“About people finding what it’s hiding.”
She returned to her bread, dusting the board with flour as they carried the tools out into the narrow passage. Tamsin added the chimney to the new plan.
They carried the tools down another flight. Felix stopped halfway to ease his arm. Nobody hurried him. Lyra took the board and waited on the broader landing while Jian shifted the equipment case clear of passing feet.
At the next house, a man denied having any connection at all.
The little drain entered the service channel directly behind his elbow.
Tamsin looked at it. He looked at her looking.
“Was here when I came.”
“Maybe. We need to see where it joins.”
“For a fine?”
“For the pressure at the stair lamp. I can’t promise to hide a dangerous joint. I can tell you what I find before it goes in the report.”
He scratched his jaw, then shifted the empty tub covering the lower access.
The joint was crude but small. It leaked dampness, not the large flow they were following. Tamsin tested beside it, then farther along. Felix read the difference aloud. Jian repeated the comparison while Lyra wrote it.
“Separate repair,” Tamsin said. “Not our source.”
The man’s shoulders dropped.
“Can you price it?”
“After this inspection.”
He let them use the access without another argument. Tamsin noted the drain accurately, neither blaming it for the district nor pretending the wet joint had become sound because the owner was frightened.
By the time they reached the terrace support, her knees ached. She set the tool bag down on a dry step and compared the two drawings. The new one had a kitchen, a repaired bend, a drain and a doorway where the old plan showed an empty rectangle.
A man came out of that doorway carrying a child’s shoe. He sat to mend its loose strap while waiting for the maintenance worker.
Felix looked at the little shoe, then at the support beneath the house.
The worker arrived with the district’s calibration weights. Tamsin asked for a second reading after the normal workshop load changed. He named the hire charge and the time he could stay.
Felix took out his purse and hesitated.
“I’d set this aside for the workshop panel. The draft over Lyra’s ladder.”
“We need that panel,” Tamsin said.
“Could we borrow the weights tomorrow?”
“Could. We lose this worker and this load change. Then we ask someone else to sign what they didn’t see today.”
He looked back at the route drawing.
She gave him time. It was his unrestricted money. They had already assigned everybody’s pay, and the refundable deposits remained untouched.
Lyra offered to lend for a defined extra test.
Tamsin checked the hire against the available amount. “We don’t need both. This is enough.”
Felix counted out the coins.
“Can we hang the results over the draft?”
“You can admire them for free.”
The maintenance worker took the weights and asked which contact they wanted observed. They showed him the lamp return and the older route toward Solitude. He checked both access points before setting his plumb line.
The man with the shoe went inside. A child called him from the doorway. That was all. No crowd gathered to declare faith in the people with the instruments.
Tamsin preferred it. She wanted the measurement to be ordinary enough that another crew could repeat it.
Before beginning, the worker found an old reference notch beneath fresh plaster. The first place Felix suggested for the instrument stand blocked the house door. They shifted it to the wall and shortened the lead instead.
Tamsin tied her sleeve back. The contact sat low enough that she had to kneel, with her tool roll balanced on the step above. She placed the lamp fitting beside the gauge so its changing warmth could be compared at the same intervals.
“Call before the switch,” she told the worker.
He repeated the sequence. Lyra checked that she could hear him from her position, then moved one pace sideways to see both readers without standing over either contact.
Felix settled his bad arm against the folded coat supporting it.
“Ready here.”
They waited for the household worker’s agreed signal. A shutter opened above them. An ordinary bucket came out onto a sill, and someone called that the reduced load was set.
Nobody touched the weights until the maintenance worker confirmed the signal. Tamsin could hear children arguing over a game inside the house. Then the argument stopped, somebody shut an inner door, and she watched the first small change arrive at her gauge.
The first comparison used the normal reduction in a small household load. Nothing extra went into the old system. Jian held only the agreed test flow steady while the maintenance worker watched the physical reference.
At the lamp contact, the pressure fell.
Felix called his reading from the other exposed point. The change through the old anchor route followed the reduction, small but consistent.
A gust crossed the terrace. The plumb line swayed.
“Wait,” Tamsin said.
They let it settle. The worker checked the reference and reset the weights. Lyra crossed out the disturbed interval rather than trying to make it fit.
The second comparison gave the same linked change.
Tamsin felt the result settle into place as surely as a sound beam under a hammer. The anchor was working. Incomplete, poorly documented and still taking a share of ordinary terrace support.
Not all of it. She could not sign that. Nor could she promise how long the remaining arrangement would hold without the missing coupler.
But it was not abandoned equipment waiting harmlessly beneath a cottage.
The keeper joined them with the original lamp housing.
“Do I need another new lamp?”
“Not for this pressure. This is the route beneath it.”
Tamsin marked the two contacts on the keeper’s service card. The next time the fitting heated without supply, she would know to call a formation worker before spending money on a fifth replacement.
The keeper read the marks back correctly, then asked the attendant to check the oil.
Evening would have light.
They returned by the inspected basket, each crossing separately while Barnaby waited to receive the copied measurements. Tamsin went straight to the garden cover. The four securing bolts remained in their preserved tray. She drew the return regulator in one place and the missing load-sharing socket in another.
Felix leaned over the page.
“That part’s definitely not the one we already found.”
“Definitely.”
“I was hoping the diagram might become more accommodating.”
Lyra attached the finding to the removal objection. The worker had signed the measurements he’d witnessed. The lamp keeper signed the condition of the fitting and the temporary lighting arrangement. Neither signed an accusation about Cinder Vale or the Ashford account.
Valen’s copy went by the ordinary recorded route. Tamsin kept the working sketch where the next person could compare it with the actual shaft.
Felix sat down on the porch step.
“So they can’t sell it.”
“They can’t honestly describe removal as taking out unused scrap. That’s what we can say.”
“They can sell an occupied danger?”
“With an adequate alternative, maybe. The academy still owns the land.”
He rubbed his forehead with his good hand.
She let him have a moment before reminding him when their three-day contract reached review. Today’s finding was useful evidence, not a permanent wage or a deed.
Below the island, the ordinary lamp came on. Its small light marked the stair where people were still coming home.
Felix went into the kitchen and returned with the kettle’s cracked gauge.
“Can we spend private money on a thing whose shape we already understand?”
Tamsin held the gauge to the light.
“Paid parts. Correct drawing.”
He smiled.
“I have a drawing.”
He brought it out, keeping the torn corners carefully together.