The lift could be shut down for six hours.
The district above it needed medicine in four.
Tavin placed both facts on the worktable, along with a sketch of the lifting assembly and a list of the people who would complain if the timetable changed. The list had grown long enough to curl at the corners.
“It’s not a passenger cage,” he said. “It’s the supply lift beside Cage Seven. We can carry people by the stairs. We can’t carry a boiler coil up those stairs without dismantling half the stairwell.”
Iven studied the sketch. “What’s wrong with the coil?”
“The clinic’s old heater split. Sera can keep the patients warm for a few hours with braziers. After that the air in the ward becomes a problem.”
Neri stood opposite him with a pencil behind one ear. “And the lift?”
“Two pins from Krail’s shipment are in the guide assembly. My crew checked the marks yesterday.”
“Can you replace them without unloading the cage?”
“That’s why you’re here.”
The supply lift occupied a shaft between two blocks of workshops. Its cage was larger than Tavin’s passenger cage and built with a flat deck for crates. Today it held a wrapped copper coil, two boxes of ceramic fittings, and a handcart belonging to the clinic. The coil was the size of a bathtub and looked expensive enough to make everyone speak quietly near it.
Sera waited beside the cage with a small woman in a thick wool coat. The woman held a list. She looked at Iven, then at the coil, then at the sky through the shaft grating.
“This is Enna,” Sera said. “She runs the upper ward.”
“Can you keep the ward warm if we’re late?” Iven asked.
“For an hour,” Enna said. “Perhaps two if we move the patients into the smaller room. The braziers aren’t safe for longer.”
“We’ll give you a time as soon as we know it.”
“Give me a time you can keep.”
Neri nodded. “That’s the plan.”
Dessa and Jem had already cleared a space beside the guide rail. They had brought two temporary supports, a chain hoist, and a crate of replacement pins from Liss’s yard. Each replacement had been measured and marked in front of witnesses. Iven liked that. He also liked that the pins were still in the crate, because it meant no one had yet found an inventive way to lose them.
He climbed onto the cage roof with Neri. Below them the shaft dropped through two levels before opening onto the lower lane. The guide assembly sat at the side: a wheel running between iron channels, held by a pin through a bracket. The pin’s end bore the faint two-line mark.
“The wheel takes the side load,” Neri said. “The cable takes the weight. If we stop the cage and support the bracket, we can remove the pin without unloading the coil.”
“Assuming the bracket isn’t already bent.”
“Assuming it is, we have a support that fits.”
She showed him the support: a heavy frame of wood and iron shaped to carry the bracket while the pin came out. Jem had built it from the measurements. Iven checked the fit against the assembly and found it within a finger’s width.
“I was hoping for a larger error,” he said.
“Why?”
“So I could tell Jem he was wrong.”
“He’ll be disappointed.”
They lowered the support into position. Dessa tightened the chain hoist while Tavin watched the cage cable from below. The first pin came out with three blows from Iven’s hammer and a little persuasion from Neri’s spanner. Its core had the same dull color as the failed pin.
Enna watched from the platform. “How long?”
“First one’s out,” Neri said. “The second is behind the wheel. We have to shift the guide.”
“That isn’t a time.”
“An hour if the second comes out cleanly. Two if it doesn’t.”
Enna checked her list. “I can give you one and a half before I start moving patients.”
“Then start preparing the smaller room now. We won’t wait to see if we need it.”
Sera gave Neri a brief approving look and left with Enna to arrange the ward. Iven watched them go. Sera had been awake late the previous night, studying the samples she had taken from the inner passages. She still moved at the pace of someone who believed the day could be made longer by refusing to stop.
A boy from the upper ward came down the stairs while they worked. He carried an empty water jug and wore an adult’s coat whose sleeves had been rolled to his elbows. Enna had apparently sent him for hot water, though his attention went first to the lifted cage.
“Is that the new heater?” he asked.
“Part of it,” Tavin said.
“Will it be warm today?”
“We’re trying.”
The boy considered the coil. “My grandmother says you can tell when somebody’s trying because they make a face.”
“What face?”
He imitated an expression of such concentrated misery that Iven nearly dropped the old pin. Neri looked up from the bracket and laughed.
“That’s exactly his face,” she said.
“I don’t look like that.”
“You do when a screw won’t come out.”
The boy turned to Tavin. “Can you show me how the cage works?”
“After we’ve made it work again.” Tavin pointed toward the kitchen cart waiting by the stairs. “Get your water first. Don’t take it through the shaft while we’re working.”
The boy went, dragging the empty jug against his leg. Tavin watched him reach the cart before he returned to the controls.
Neri laid the first removed pin beside the replacement and traced the difference in their surfaces. “We’ll need to count every one of these, not just the ones in Tavin’s cages.”
“That could be a lot of lifts,” Iven said.
“Yes. Which is why we need crews who know what they’re looking for.”
“Liss can make a sheet with the marks.”
“And a test that doesn’t require tearing each lift apart.” Neri tapped the exposed end of the second pin. “We can teach them to check the stamp first. If it has the double line, they report it and stop putting people under the load.”
“Someone will say the mark doesn’t prove it’s bad.”
“Then they can test it. Until then, I don’t intend to volunteer my crew as the test.”
Below them, the boy returned with his jug and showed Tavin the miserable trying face again. Tavin copied it so accurately that the boy laughed all the way up the stair.
The second pin resisted. Iven tapped it, then struck harder. It shifted only a fraction. Neri checked the bracket and found a burr where the pin had bent against the wheel.
“We need the pressure off that side,” she said.
Tavin called up, “The cable’s holding.”
“It isn’t the cable. The cage is leaning into the guide.”
They rigged a temporary line from the cage roof to an anchor on the opposite wall. Iven seated the winch pattern in a free channel, keeping the plate brace and piston ready. He fixed the physical rope to the roof and used the imprint to draw against the anchor. The cage shifted a few centimeters, enough to relieve the wheel.
“Hold it,” Neri said.
“I am.”
“No, I mean keep holding it while I take the pin.”
“An important distinction.”
She worked the pin free. Iven kept tension on the line until Dessa fitted the replacement. It slid through smoothly, its head seating against the bracket. Neri inserted the retaining clip and struck it home.
The work had taken less than an hour. Iven began to think they might finish with time to spare, which was when the chain hoist on the temporary support gave a short metallic snap.
The support dropped. The guide wheel lurched out of alignment, and the cage jerked toward the wall. Below, Tavin shouted for everyone to clear the shaft.
Iven released the winch pull and reached for the support. Neri caught his coat before he leaned over the edge.
“You can’t lift it by hand.”
“I’m not trying to.”
He seated the ratchet pattern, giving up the piston channel. Two seconds felt much longer with the cage shifting beneath them. He set the pattern against the slipping chain and held it at the next tooth. The support stopped falling, but it hung crooked, one leg trapped against the guide rail.
Dessa climbed the side ladder. “The chain’s cut.”
“Broken?” Neri asked.
“Cut. Look at the end.”
Iven looked. One link had been sawn nearly through. The remaining metal had torn under load, leaving a bright notch that had nothing to do with the lift’s ordinary wear.
A shout rose from the lower platform. Someone had pushed a crate into the shaft entrance, blocking the path to the hoist controls. The crate toppled as Tavin tried to move it, spilling loose fittings across the floor. Two men in work coats came through the crowd behind it.
“Get away from the controls,” one of them called.
Tavin looked up. “Do you recognize them?”
Dessa’s expression hardened. “The one on the left was outside the apprenticeship yard.”
Krail’s people had not come for another conversation.
Neri knelt beside the trapped support. “Iven, can you hold the chain while I move the leg?”
“For a little while.”
“Don’t guess.”
He checked the pull in the graft. It was steady, but the chain’s weight and the cage’s movement would not stay steady forever. “A minute. Maybe two if the cage doesn’t shift again.”
“Then we’ll do it in one.”
She drove a wedge beneath the support leg. Iven maintained the ratchet hold while Dessa pulled on the free end of the chain. The support rose a finger’s width. Neri struck the wedge farther in, and the leg came clear of the rail.
Below, Tavin met the first man beside the spilled fittings. The man shoved him against the wall. Tavin caught a handful of the man’s coat and dragged him down among the parts. The second man reached for the hoist controls.
Iven could not reach him from the cage roof. He had a bell pulse ready in his library but would have to clear a channel to seat it, and he could not release the ratchet yet. He made the only choice that helped the support and the people below at once.
“Dessa, take the chain.”
She wrapped it around the temporary anchor and pulled. Neri drove the wedge deeper. Iven released the ratchet, reseated the bell, and sent a short pulse into the iron rail beside the controls.
The sound cracked through the shaft. The man flinched and covered one ear. Tavin used the opening to kick the control handle away from him.
The cage swung gently. The coil inside shifted against its lashings. Neri looked down through the roof grating.
“That’s our second problem.”
The coil’s retaining strap had slipped. If the cage moved suddenly, the weight could slide to one side and pull the guide wheel out again.
“We can’t unload it here,” Iven said.
“We can secure it.”
She climbed down the cage ladder, keeping one hand on the frame. Iven followed. Below, Tavin and the yard workers had driven the two men back toward the lane, but the men had not left. One stood with his hand inside his coat, watching the controls.
Dessa called down, “There are more at the far end.”
Iven looked through the shaft opening. Three figures had appeared beyond the spilled fittings. They were not carrying supplies. One had a length of chain; another held a hook used for moving cargo.
Neri tightened the coil’s strap and checked the knot. “The guide’s still loose. We need the cage lowered a little to seat it.”
“And the controls are down there.”
“Yes.” She met his eyes. “I’m not leaving the ward without heat.”
“Neither am I.”
She pulled a short iron bar from the tool crate and handed it to him. “Then go make room for Tavin.”
Iven took the bar. His wrist hurt when he closed his hand around it. He shifted his grip until the pain became manageable, then climbed down toward the platform where Krail’s men waited.