The oil jar had been made for pickled onions.
Iven turned its unbroken neck beneath the receiving-office lamp. Around the rim, a maker’s notch interrupted the glaze. The same notch appeared on two jars standing beside Ruma’s kitchen window, where they contained nothing more dangerous than the vegetables for which they had been bought.
“The potter sells all over the western road,” Ruma said. “Don’t arrest him because somebody put fire in his work.”
“We won’t.”
“Good. Ask who bought forty without wanting lids.”
The receiving guard beside Iven wrote that down.
Five days after visiting Vost, Iven had come to the office to collect a convoy manifest. Instead he had found a practical route into the attack that had injured the keeper and killed Senn and Baret. The captured launch foreman had named a quartermaster, but his word alone could be an attempt to move blame toward someone he disliked. The jars, cart marks and ordinary purchase accounts could tell a more limited story that did not require believing him entirely.
The guard’s name was Reva Nollan. She had led the receiving watch through the fire’s aftermath and had no interest in turning her search into a private feud. She asked Iven to accompany the road party because the attackers’ supply place lay beneath an old quarry face, where a capable graft and a good eye for working loads might matter.
