Harp Station came into view through a screen of hanging cloth.
Mara had mistaken the first pale strips for washing. As the freight train climbed nearer on day 1084, she saw that they hung over the road in deliberate rows, each strip weighted with a small wooden shape. Wind moved through them and turned the shapes without making them strike one another. Birds, fish, an animal with an implausibly long nose. Beneath them a woman was selling hot bread from a wheeled oven.
Sennat Ul held the equipment cart below the final turn while the station’s receiving crew cleared a space.
Sixteen travel days from Caldrin, with a reduced passing schedule at the slipped bank and two slow mornings behind heavier loads. The tools had covered about a hundred and forty kilometers. They had not become a light courier merely because Mara wanted the answer waiting here.
Hona bought a small wooden fish while they waited.
“For the sample case?” Rav asked.
“For me.”
He considered that and bought bread for all three of them.
