The broken freight line hung across the gorge like a sentence abandoned halfway through speaking.
Iven stood beneath its western anchor and watched the far carriage turn slowly in the wind. The load itself had reached the eastern receiving shelf. Its empty sling had caught on the return journey, leaving the carriage suspended above a white thread of water eighty paces below.
Nobody was aboard it. That fact had been established before anyone sent for him.
“Then why the guard?” he asked.
Nael Rett pointed above the opposite shelf.
Three men stood against the sky with long rifles. Far enough from the receiving crew to pretend they had merely come to watch. Near enough to cover the place where workers would have to stand to reach the return rope.
“They say the eastern toll applies to the air above this cut.”
“Does it?”
