The cable moved while Iven’s hands were inside the frame.
Not far. A finger’s width across the marked guide.
Enough to make the worker beside him stop breathing.
“Hold,” Iven said.
The local crew held.
Beyond First Vent’s western service wall, a council retrieval party had put a hauling demand through the inspection line Fesk had left attached. They called it their equipment. The line still crossed the damaged junction’s temporary support, and no one outside had asked what its movement would do to the people working beneath it.
Iven took his hands clear before giving another instruction.
Plate, clamp bridge, bearing, winch and counterweight occupied his five routes. The morning’s reserve stood a little under three hundred after two nights of ordinary recovery and the intervening work. His measured maximum remained three hundred and eighty. He had enough strength for a controlled answer, not a reason to let someone else’s impatience choose the direction.
