By the time the first hard frost reached Stonewake, Iven had stopped moving his tools off the bench at the end of every day.
He still put them away. The workhouse keeper insisted on that. But the little test frame could remain on its marked part of the floor, the kettle on the shelf and the drawings in the cupboard whose key had grown familiar in his pocket.
A one-winged wooden bird stood above the vice.
Vale had brought it herself when she came to see the bench. She had inspected the chair, accepted a cup of tea and left the bird where its single wing cast a long shadow in the afternoon light.
That morning, on the three hundred and seventy-second day, Iven put his hand to the gauge before the first loaded run.
One hundred and fifty-eight.
The increase had come by small measures over months: work, food, sleep, repeated conditioning against a known load. He had learned to hold his useful force through longer sequences, to stop wasting it in the first ambitious movement and leave himself something for the last. Four channels still carried the work. The old functions remained as familiar as his ordinary spanners, with the low call learned from Mercy beside them.
