The first thing Senna did was put her good coat over the municipal shear.
Iven looked at the folded garment on the blade bed.
“Is that protection for the machine?”
“It is protection for my coat. If I put it on that floor, I shall spend the rest of the day brushing rust out of it.”
She took a narrow lamp from her apprentice and lowered herself to examine the underside of the table. Her apprentice, a broad young man named Lute, watched the coat with the anxious attention of someone who had already been told what another one would cost.
The shear occupied the rear maintenance bay of the old intake. Its motor had been removed before the flooding, but everything below the clutch shaft had remained: the heavy cheeks of the frame, the descending blade carrier, the long tripping arm and the spring housing whose cover had split along its lower seam. Dried silt lay in every upward-facing hollow. Across the floor, the rangers had chalked the limits of the accessible plant. Beyond the far grille, daylight showed through the repaired rear hatch.
Nothing moved in the drain.
Iven had looked before entering. He looked again when a little gravel ticked against the grille, then saw a sparrow hopping along the outer wall.
