The pin looked too small to have endangered a worker and nearly delayed the cage’s passengers.
Iven set it on Neri’s workbench between a jar of bent nails and a wooden model of a bridge. The metal had cooled, but one end was still greasy from Cage Seven’s lifting assembly. A shallow crescent scar marked the place where the load had bitten into it. Along the other side ran a narrow bright seam.
Neri leaned over his shoulder. “That’s not a crack.”
“I know.”
“You were about to call it a crack.”
“I was about to call it something worse.”
“Good. I prefer accuracy.”
Her workshop occupied the covered end of a repair yard in Rung Ward. Rain had found three routes through the roof, none of which corresponded to the buckets underneath. Jem Tarl, her carpenter, was moving the buckets with the patient expression of a man who knew this was not his job and would be doing it for the rest of the morning.
Dessa Morn stood at the door, looking toward the street. She had a length of lifting chain looped across one shoulder. The chain was not a weapon unless someone made it one, and Iven admired her ability to communicate that without speaking.
Tavin came in behind her carrying an account book bound in oilcloth. He shut the door with his heel.
“The cage is tied off,” he said. “My relief captain is there. Nobody touches the gear until we say.”
“Can your relief captain read a work order?” Neri asked.
“He can read the part that says no.”
“That’ll do.”
Iven rolled the pin under the light. The seam caught on his nail. He brought out his folding gauge, measured the diameter at four points, and wrote the figures on a scrap of crate wood. The pin was slightly oval where it had taken the load. A proper hardened pin could bend under enough force, but it should not have developed the soft, smeared edge he had seen as the cage lurched.
He placed a cold chisel on the seam and tapped it once with his small hammer.
Nothing happened.
He tapped it harder. A thin cap lifted at the edge, revealing duller metal beneath.
Tavin’s jaw moved. “Tell me that’s dirt.”
“It’s not.” Iven pried the cap free. “Hard surface. Soft core.”
“Pins have cores,” Jem said from the bucket. “I’ve seen them.”
“This is not the right one.” Iven angled the exposed face toward the window. “Look at the grain. It was poured around a cheaper shaft and dressed to fit. For a cart latch, maybe. Not a passenger lift.”
Neri picked up the wooden bridge model and used its little crosspiece to point at the pin. “The shoulder is the same size as the one we ordered.”
“The outside is.”
“Can you prove the inside was wrong before it failed?”
Iven looked at her. “That’s a nasty question.”
“It’s the one Krail will ask.”
Factor Perrin Krail had denied substituting anything in Cage Seven. He had done it politely, in a voice that suggested all disagreement was a misunderstanding the speaker could correct by thinking harder. Iven remembered the man’s clean hands and the way he had glanced at the cage only after checking who was watching him.
Tavin opened his book. “Delivery was the morning the overhaul started. Three pins, a collar, and a crate of guide wheels. Signed for at the north loading table.”
“By you?”
“By my mate. She counted the pieces. The order didn’t require her to cut one open.”
“It shouldn’t have,” Neri said.
Tavin slid the book toward Iven. A cramped signature occupied the bottom of the page. Above it was a delivery mark: a triangle with a short line across its base.
Iven turned the broken pin over. There was a similar mark near the shoulder, almost hidden beneath grease. He scraped it with his thumbnail. A sliver of black coating came away.
The mark did not quite match the one in the book. On the pin, the line extended past the triangle on one side. It looked like the tail of a fish.
“That’s odd,” he said.
Neri bent close. “What?”
He pointed. “The mark in the book is Krail Haulage. Let’s look more closely at the Sable stamp we saw under the later mark.”
Dessa came away from the door. “Could be the maker’s mark.”
“Could be.” Iven fetched a magnifying lens from a drawer after Neri told him which drawer and threatened him about the contents of the others. Under the lens he could confirm the earlier impression: SABLE above part of FOUNDRY, arranged in two lines, with a later triangle crossing the letters. Someone had struck the triangle over them, hard enough to flatten part of the older mark.
Tavin held out his hand. Iven gave him the lens.
The captain studied the metal for a long moment. “That wasn’t on the delivery sheet.”
“Maybe the maker sells to Krail,” Jem said.
“Maybe.” Neri set the bridge model down. “We need another one from the same lot. An untouched one.”
Tavin’s face tightened. “There are two still in my stores.”
“Then let’s look before anyone has a reason to fetch them.”
They went by the lower stairs instead of the public lift. Iven could feel the long, slow movement of Mercy beneath the deck: an old pressure in the soles of his boots, followed by the answering creak of joints in the walls. Somewhere above, someone was practicing a trumpet badly enough to start an argument between dogs.
Tavin walked quickly. His coat was still open from the yard, and one sleeve had a streak of grease across the elbow. He kept the broken pin wrapped in cloth inside his pocket.
“You think someone will come for the others?” he asked.
“I think someone might come to help you check them,” Neri said. “And then there’ll be fewer to check.”
“You’ve met my friends.”
“I’ve met people who call you their friend when they want your cargo moved.”
They reached the stores room beneath a sloping brace. The door was locked. Tavin stopped so abruptly that Iven nearly walked into him.
“The latch was different,” he said.
There were fresh scratches on the hasp. Iven crouched and touched one. Bright metal showed through the paint.
Tavin drew a key from his belt. It entered the lock, turned, and met no resistance.
Inside, the room smelled of hemp rope and lamp oil. Boxes sat in ordered rows under a low ceiling. A lamp burned at the far end, though there was enough daylight through the grating to see without it.
A woman stood by an open crate. She held a pin in one hand and a paper in the other. Her gray coat had the neat black cuff of a Krail clerk.
“You’re early,” she said.
Tavin shut the door behind them. “You’re in my stores.”
“I’ve come to retrieve a defective shipment.” She showed him the paper. “Replacement authorized.”
Neri read over his shoulder. “By Krail.”
“Who supplied the parts.”
“Who says he didn’t supply the wrong parts,” Tavin said.
The clerk’s expression did not change. “Which is why he intends to investigate them.”
Iven glanced at the crate. One pin remained inside, wrapped in waxed cloth. The clerk had placed the other on a clean sheet of paper. Her pen lay nearby, its nib wet.
“Have you recorded the marks?” he asked.
“Yes.”
“Both of them?”
The clerk hesitated for less than a breath. It was enough.
Tavin took the pin from her hand. “The shipment stays here.”
“I have an order.”
“And I have a cage that nearly fell.”
The clerk folded her paper. “If the parts are dangerous, leaving them in circulation puts people at risk.”
“They’re not in circulation.” Neri pointed to the locked room. “They were until someone opened the door.”
“Your door was unlocked.”
Dessa reached past the woman, touched the scratches on the inner edge of the hasp, and held up her fingertips. A thin curl of paint lay on one of them.
The clerk looked at it. Then she looked at Tavin. “Factor Krail will hear about this.”
“He can join the queue.”
She collected her paper and pen. Iven watched her carefully. She was frightened, though she kept her voice steady. Whoever had sent her had given her an order and a story, not necessarily the truth.
“What’s your name?” he asked.
“Why?”
“If we have to account for who saw the pins, I’d rather write it correctly.”
Her mouth tightened. “Mara. Mara Fen.”
Neri nodded toward the door. “You saw us take nothing out of the room. You saw the crate was open when we arrived.”
“I opened it.”
“Good. You can say that too.”
Mara looked from one face to another. “He’ll say I made a mistake.”
“Maybe,” Iven said. “But if the next cage falls, he’ll need someone else to say it was an accident.”
She left without answering. Dessa followed her out to the landing, not close enough to threaten, close enough to see where she went.
Tavin wrapped both intact pins separately. Neri wrote their marks on the crate lid, then had him sign beneath her description. Iven added his name as a witness, feeling the familiar drag of the pen at the end of Marr. He had signed enough things in his life to know that ink could become heavier later.
Jem had brought a little wooden box from the workshop. They placed the broken pin in it, padded with rags, and set the box under the bench back at the yard. Neri made Iven repeat the marks from memory before she let him close the lid.
“Sable above part of Foundry,” he said. “Two lines, overstruck with a triangle whose base runs long.”
“And if somebody says you’ve invented it?”
“I’ll show them the pin.”
“And if the pin goes missing?”
“Then I’ll show them your beautiful drawing.”
Her drawing was a blunt shape with two lines and a triangle. She looked at it, looked at him, and took the pencil back.
“I’m an engineer,” she said. “Not a portrait painter.”
“That’s a relief. I was worried this was me.”
She threw the pencil. He caught it, pleased with himself until it left graphite on his palm.
Dessa returned with news. Mara had gone to Krail’s office and then to a loading house near the upper freight tracks. She had not taken the pins, but she had spoken to a wagon driver whose coat bore the same two-line mark.
“Did you catch the name?” Neri asked.
“Not the driver. The wagon had it painted under the rail. Sable Foundry.”
Tavin frowned. “Sable makes cheap hardware.”
“And expensive promises?” Iven asked.
“They make whatever people pay for.”
Neri tapped the drawing. “Then we find out who paid.”
Tavin stayed after Dessa left to fetch a copy of the delivery record. He sat at the edge of the bench with his hands flat against his knees, watching Iven wrap the pin a second time. The cloth had taken on a dark mark from the metal.
“One of Dorel’s workers was in that cage,” the captain said. “He went in to check the guide before we let any passengers aboard.”
Iven tied the cloth. “He got out.”
“He did. I watched him check the guide.” Tavin’s fingers closed against his trousers. “If we find this was deliberate, I don’t want him hearing that someone should have known before he did. The man did his job.”
“He did,” Neri said. “And counting a shipment isn’t the same as testing what it’s made of.”
Tavin gave a short nod, but did not look persuaded. Iven recognized the problem. The space between what a worker could know and what a worker wished he had known afterward could be wide enough to live in.
“We’ll test the other pins,” Iven said. “Not here. Somewhere with a press and somebody who can write down what happens while we do it.”
“A public shop?” Neri asked.
“If they’ll take us.”
She considered that. “Jem’s cousin works at the apprenticeship yard. Their press is old, but the load gauge isn’t.”
Jem glanced up. “She’ll want paying.”
“Good,” Tavin said. “I’ll pay her.”
“And she’ll want to keep the pieces.”
Iven looked at the little box. He did not like surrendering the evidence. Keeping it alone would be worse. “She can keep one. We keep one. We make copies of every mark before the press touches either.”
Neri picked up the pencil again. “I’ll make the drawing.”
“I thought you weren’t a portrait painter.”
“That’s why you’ll still recognize the pin when I’m done.”
Outside, a rain bucket overflowed. Jem moved it three inches to the left, where it continued to overflow with slightly better aim.