On day fourteen hundred and forty-two, Tavin gave the emptied medicine cart to Deni before breakfast.
“Yours for the next run,” he said.
She looked at its patched wheel, then at him. “A generous promotion.”
“The road assignment. You choose the drivers, shelters, and loads. Yara’s unit protects the agreed stretch. The keepers decide their own water turns. If one of those arrangements fails, you stop the train before it becomes a rescue.”
Deni put her hand on the cart’s rail. Her shoulder had healed enough for ordinary work, though she still let another worker lift the heavier sacks. She had brought a freight train across the March and held it at the correct place when a security machine advanced on it. Tavin did not need another demonstration before trusting her with the next road.
“I want the ridge shelter stocked before the second run,” she said. “Dry fodder, not another promise of grass.”
“Put the order in.”
“And two reserve wheels.”
