The first cart reached the tile warehouse with frost still bright in its wheel spokes. Etta stood beside the open doors holding the key on a length of blue cord.
“Who takes it when you sleep?” Rila asked.
“My daughter.”
“And when she sleeps?”
“Astonishingly, she also knows people.”
Rila put down her pencil. Etta smiled without showing her teeth, then handed over the second key. The ward representative inspected its roughly cut wards before putting it in her coat. That small exchange pleased Iven more than the speeches the previous evening. People who meant to share a building needed to know who could open it.
He had helped close its roof. Now, on the five hundred and fifty-sixth morning, he was going to fill the dry half of it with coal.
Neri came through the rear room carrying two wooden gauges. She had spent the early hour with Belen marking clearances around the potters’ racks. The coal would occupy three covered bays beside the loading door; the molds and unfired work would remain behind a partition with its own access. A painted line across the floor was already acquiring footprints.
