The tower camp smelled of wet canvas and hot tea. Yan and Wei returned from the northern ridge with Nara and the engineers. The storm had cleared, but the cloud line above the distant hills remained dark.
Gu’s reply waited on the relay table. Fen had copied the parts list onto thick paper and pinned it beside a diagram of the cracked anchor.
“Two regulators, one ceramic channel sleeve, and anchor bolts,” Wei read. “The capital storehouse has the matching regulators.”
Bai Jiu spread a market catalogue on the table. “The river towns sell regulators, but their fittings are too narrow. We could file them down, but the metal would be thinner where the storm pushes hardest.”
“We shouldn’t gamble the tower on a part that only looks right,” Nara said.
Yan leaned over the diagram. The missing regulator was shaped like a short brass drum with three notches around its edge. He could feel the old furnace’s remaining current in his memory, a contained strength that could not yet be used.
“How soon can a small party reach the capital?” he asked.
Wei traced Han’s inland route through the tested ford and a chain of staffed shelters. “Several days if we travel light. The supply wagons will be slower.”
