Dey Sann put the cracked guide shoe on the workshop table and refused to let anyone call it cosmetic.
A dark line crossed the iron below its bearing face. When he turned the piece toward the window, Iven could see where the two sides had begun moving differently. The compression ram’s opposed heads should travel along the same axis. This shoe had let one head tilt under load. More pressure would have pressed the error harder into the work.
“That’s why the red board stays up,” Dey said. “I don’t care how urgently somebody wants new sleeves.”
On the morning of day 1217, that urgency was real. Ember Wash needed fitted sleeves and sound pipe fittings for a permanent return route. The temporary settling-yard relief was holding within its marked allowance. The housing branch remained shut. The eleven rescued people had spent another night in the cooler storehouse; the worker with the scalded hand was receiving Sera’s care and would not be back at a hot bench today.
The stopped ram belonged to the town forge cooperative. Dey was its responsible fitter. Keln Arve’s company had rented batches from it before, but did not own its controls or the right to run it past a red board. Lessa paid for the urgent repair hours. She kept the regular forge workers’ wages in the account too.
