The old lift pit contained three feet of mud, a broken bucket, and a wheel no one could reach from the surface.
Hend lowered the lamp until its light caught the screw’s dark threads. A pale crust covered the lower bearing. Above it, two guide rails rose toward the near abutment of the broken bridge.
“It’s all here,” he said.
Pev looked into the pit. “So is a great deal of hill.”
They had brought a pump for the water and shovels for the rest. The air had been tested from the bottom before anyone put a head beneath the slab. Iven waited beside the short external hoist while the first buckets came up, carrying mud that smelled of old leaves and iron.
The near side of the upper kiln road belonged to the terrace association. Ama had obtained its working agreement for the lift and the road wall, within the ground the association actually held. The far station remained under Marr’s guards. No one described rebuilding a whole bridge as a job they could begin tomorrow.
But a working lift would bring stone to the near roadbed without carrying every block up the goat path.
Neri had made that the next useful piece.
