The ward engineer returned to White Orchard with a sketch of Sava’s relay station. He had drawn the outer wall and the channels that carried commands into the barrier. He did not mark the seal chamber.
Gu He placed his own diagram beside it. “I think the command line can be isolated here. The outer ward remains connected if this junction is intact.”
The engineer compared the drawings. “The wall is right. The channel turns behind the store room. Your line goes through the old drain, not the relay floor.”
Gu took a charcoal stick and moved the line. “That changes the access. Can you confirm the command channel still meets the outer ward at this junction?”
“Yes. But I will not show where the seal sits.”
“You don’t have to,” Gu said. “We can mark the channel without the location.”
He spread a larger sheet on the floor and asked the engineer to stand where the relay room would be. Gu walked the route with a piece of string, tracing the command line from the outer ward to the channel junction. The engineer stopped him twice: once where the wall had been rebuilt, and once where a drain had been sealed after a flood.
