The wheel was hanging six feet above the floor, which made it difficult for anyone to claim it had been misplaced.
It hung from a hook in the freight yard’s storage shed, with a paper tag tied through its spokes. Iven read the tag from below. It listed the diameter, the axle size, and the weight it could carry. A red line had been drawn across the bottom, beneath the word reserved.
“Reserved for whom?” Tavin asked.
The storekeeper lifted his ledger. “The order doesn’t name the final user.”
“Does it name the person who paid?”
“Yes.”
“Can you tell us?”
“No.”
Tavin looked at Iven. “I thought we’d save time by coming here ourselves.”
“We have. We know the wheel exists.”
“That’s not the part I doubted.”
The storekeeper was a small man with a long neck and a voice that did not change when Tavin raised his. His name, according to a board on the wall, was Edren. He had offered them chairs and water before refusing to identify the reservation, which made him harder to dislike.
“Cage Seven has a gouged guide wheel,” Tavin said. “It’s running under a strict load limit. The replacement is the right size.”
“And someone else has paid to reserve it.”
“Is the other lift carrying injured people?”
“I don’t know.”
“Can you ask the person who paid?”
Edren considered. “I can send a message. The answer may take a day.”
“The cage needs it sooner.”
“Then you can offer to buy the reservation.”
Iven looked up at the wheel. Its rim was sound. The hub was dark with protective grease, and the spoke nearest the tag carried a maker’s mark he did not recognize. He wanted to see the bearing surface before anyone spent money on it, but Edren had made clear that the wheel could not come down until the owner agreed.
“Who receives the offer?” he asked.
“I do.”
“Who decides?”
“The person who paid.”
“Without a name?”
“Names aren’t required to buy a reservation.”
“That’s convenient for the person buying.”
“It can be.” Edren set down the ledger. “It also protects someone who doesn’t want a crowd at the door asking for a part they’ve already paid to keep.”
Tavin’s jaw moved. “I’ve got a crowd asking to use my cage.”
“I understand. I don’t have a second wheel.”
The shed door opened. Neri came in with Dessa and Jem, followed by a young man carrying a flat wooden box. Neri had inspected the bridge bolts after the morning crossing and found no movement beyond the marks. She had left a second crew to check them again at evening.
“What’s the price?” she asked.
“It’s reserved,” Iven said.
“That’s a condition. I asked for the price.”
Edren gave a figure. Tavin let out a breath through his missing front teeth. It was more than the transport office had allocated for the whole guide repair.
“Is that what the owner asked?” Neri said.
“That’s what the owner offered to accept if the reservation is transferred.”
“Before we arrived?”
“Yes.”
“Then the owner expected someone to need it.”
“Someone usually does.”
The young man with the box put it on the floor. He had brought the old wheel’s measurements from Cage Seven. Iven compared them with the tag and found a small difference in the hub width. It might be harmless. It might require a spacer. It was another reason to inspect the wheel before payment.
Edren saw where he was looking. “The tag gives the outside width. The bearing seat is narrower.”
“Can I measure it?”
“From the floor, if you can reach.”
Iven dragged a stool beneath the wheel. He climbed onto it, steadied himself against the rack, and extended his folding gauge. The stool rocked. Dessa put one hand on its back.
“You’re welcome,” she said.
“I hadn’t thanked you yet.”
“I know. I’m practicing.”
The bearing seat matched the old wheel. The outside rim was wider because it included a protective flange. He closed the gauge and climbed down.
“It fits,” he told Tavin.
“Good. Now we only need the rest of the money.”
Neri asked Edren whether the owner would accept another wheel of the same specification in exchange. The storekeeper looked at the empty space on the rack beside the reserved one.
“If you had one, you wouldn’t need mine.”
“We might know where to get one.”
“Then why not use it?”
“Because it may be farther away than the people waiting for Cage Seven can afford.”
Edren wrote the offer on a slip and handed it to a messenger. The messenger left through the rear door. Tavin watched the door close.
“Does the owner live nearby?”
“I said the answer may take a day.”
“That wasn’t my question.”
“I noticed.”
They left the shed without the wheel. Outside, the yard was crowded with carts carrying timber, water barrels, and bundles of salvaged metal. The collapse had increased the demand for almost everything that could be used to hold something else up. A woman was arguing with a driver over a load of roofing sheets. The driver insisted he had brought twelve. She counted eleven and pointed to an empty space on the cart where the twelfth should have been.
Tavin turned toward the transport office. “I’ll ask for more funds.”
“You’ll need a reason beyond the reservation,” Neri said. “They’ll say we can use the cage under the limit.”
“We can. We can’t move the larger loads the clinic needs.”
“Then take the clinic schedule and the bridge’s current capacity. Show them what goes by the long route if the cage stays limited.”
“I was going to.”
“Good. I’m saving you the trouble of pretending you hadn’t thought of it.”
He left with the young man and the measurement box. Dessa went to check the evening bridge crew. Jem returned to the yard to prepare a spacer in case the wheel needed one after all. Iven and Neri crossed the freight lane toward the storage office, where they hoped to find a record of other wheels of the same size.
A cart blocked the narrow turn. Its driver was trying to persuade a mule-sized, six-legged draft animal to move backward. The animal had a broad shell over its shoulders and a harness that had twisted beneath one forelimb. Each time the driver pulled, the harness tightened.
“Stop pulling,” Iven said.
The driver glared at him. “You can do it, then.”
“Gladly. Give me the line.”
Iven approached the animal from the side. Its eyes followed him, small and dark beneath a ridge of bone. It stamped once. He waited for the foot to settle, then loosened the harness buckle and freed the trapped strap. The animal took a step forward, giving the driver enough room to turn the cart.
“Why didn’t it back up?” the driver asked.
“Would you?”
“I’m not an animal.”
“That’s not what I asked.”
The driver took the line and led the animal through the turn. It paused beside Neri long enough to sniff the edge of her coat. She offered it a piece of dried apple from her pocket. It ate the apple and moved on.
“You carry food for animals?” Iven asked.
“I carry food for myself. It looked more patient than you.”
The storage office had three clerks and a wall full of pigeonholes. One clerk was helping a family locate a crate of bedding that had been sent to the wrong saddle. Another was asleep over a stack of forms. The third, a woman with a green scarf, listened to Neri’s request and brought out a register of lift parts.
“There were four wheels in the rear stores last month,” she said. “One went to the east freight line. One to the water board. One was scrapped. The last is in Edren’s shed.”
“Who received the water-board wheel?”
“The upper circulation station.”
“Is it installed?”
The clerk checked another page. “Not according to the return.”
Iven looked at Neri. The upper circulation station had been damaged during Mercy’s turn. If the wheel was still in its crate, it might be needed there more urgently than at Cage Seven. If it was surplus, it might provide a path around the reservation.
“Can we see the return?” Neri asked.
The clerk hesitated. “It belongs to the water board.”
“Can you ask them?”
“I can send a message.”
Tavin would have recognized the answer. Iven thanked her before he said something that would make the message travel more slowly.
They went to the upper circulation station themselves. The station stood above a bank of pipes, with a roof vent that turned in the wind. The vent was missing two blades and made an uneven ticking noise. A worker on the roof was trying to hold the remaining blades still while another tied a line around the spindle.
“That looks promising,” Iven said.
“The wheel first,” Neri replied.
Inside, the station’s forewoman showed them the wheel they had come to find. It had already been fitted to a small freight lift. The old one lay on the floor beside it, cracked across the hub.
“We’ve been waiting to file the return,” the forewoman said. “The clerk who does it is working at the damaged reservoir.”
“Do you need the old wheel?”
“We need it out of the way.”
Iven examined the crack. It ran through the hub and into one spoke. The rim was sound. A repair might make it suitable for light use, but he would not put it in Cage Seven without replacing the hub and testing the whole assembly.
“Could we take it?” he asked.
“If you can carry it.”
They could not, at least not safely between two people on the narrow stairs. Neri borrowed a cart from the station and had the forewoman sign that the damaged wheel had been released. The forewoman accepted the form without asking for a second copy, which made Iven wonder whether she had lost faith in paperwork or merely had too much work to notice it.
On the way out, the worker on the roof called down. “Has anyone seen a spare fan blade?”
“No,” Neri replied. “Has anyone seen the missing ones?”
“Below us, somewhere.”
Iven looked at the vent. The remaining blades struck the housing once every three turns. The sound came through the roof and into the station, where it made the pipes seem to tick in sympathy.
“Can you stop it?” he called.
“We did. The line slipped.”
He seated the hook pattern in place of the filter, keeping the plate and winch ready. The roof was low enough for a short cast to reach a sound bracket beside the vent. He used an ordinary rope first, throwing it over the bracket and pulling to test it. When it held, he climbed onto the lower ledge and secured the line. The roof worker caught the other end and tied it around the spindle.
The fan stopped. The station grew noticeably quieter.
“Thank you,” the worker said. “We need to keep air moving until the new blades come.”
“Can you turn it by hand?”
“Not enough for the lower rooms.”
“Then don’t run it with two blades missing. You’ll break the bearing and lose the whole vent.”
The worker looked at the tied spindle. “You sound like the forewoman.”
“She’s right.”
“That’s what she says.”
Iven climbed down. He had not repaired the fan and had gained nothing new from it. The problem would remain until the station found parts. He wrote the station’s location on the back of the release form so he could remember to ask later.
They brought the damaged wheel to Neri’s yard. Jem had cleared a place on the workbench and laid out the old Cage Seven wheel beside a drawing. When he saw what they had, he ran a hand over the cracked hub.
“That’s a difficult replacement.”
“Can we make one?”
“Yes. Can we make it quickly?” Jem looked at the tools. “Not without a proper press and a new sleeve.”
Neri measured the rim. “If the rim is sound, we can use it. We’ll need a foundry to cut out the hub and fit a new one.”
“Liss?” Iven asked.
“Her press can remove it. She’ll know who can make the sleeve.”
They wheeled the part to the apprenticeship yard. Liss Tarl examined the crack, then took a small hammer and struck the rim at several points. The notes differed where the spokes joined it, but none suggested a fracture in the outer ring.
“I can remove the hub,” she said. “A new one will take two days if the foundry has stock.”
“Tavin needs a wheel sooner.”
“Then he needs the reserved one.”
“We’re trying.”
“Good. I’ll start the work on this one. If you get the reserved wheel, this becomes a spare for the next cage.”
She named a price. Neri accepted it after confirming that the cooperative could use the wheel if the transport office declined to buy it. Liss wrote the terms on a scrap and pinned it to the damaged rim.
Iven helped her set the wheel in the press. The hub resisted at first. She checked the supports, shifted one block by a fraction, and turned the screw again. The cracked center moved out of the rim with a long, gritty sound. Iven caught it before it fell into the tray.
“Still think you can make it quickly?” Liss asked.
“I think you can.”
“That wasn’t the question.”
By the time Tavin returned, the sun had moved behind the upper saddle. He had brought an authorization for part of the price and a look that suggested the transport office had made him earn it.
“They’ll pay half,” he said. “The rest comes from my reserve.”
“You need that reserve,” Neri said.
“I need the cage.”
“Can the clinic contribute?”
“Vale’s kitchen is already covering fuel for two rooms. I’m not asking them.”
Iven offered a portion of his own pay. Tavin refused. Neri suggested a cooperative loan instead, with repayment from the cage’s future service contract. Tavin considered longer before accepting that.
“I won’t take the yard’s wages.”
“It’s not wages. It’s money we set aside for equipment.”
“The wheel won’t belong to you.”
“No. The cage will carry the people who use our bridge. That’s enough.”
They returned to Edren’s shed with the combined funds. The messenger had come back. Edren stood beneath the wheel with a fresh slip in his hand.
“The owner declined the exchange,” he said.
Tavin held out the authorization. “We’re paying.”
“There’s a condition.”
“What condition?”
“The owner wants the wheel installed on Cage Seven in the presence of a representative.”
Iven felt his interest sharpen. “Why?”
“The slip doesn’t say.”
“Does it name the representative?”
“No. The representative will meet you at the landing tomorrow morning.”
Neri held out her hand for the slip. Edren gave it to her. The paper carried a small mark in one corner: not Krail’s triangle, not the water board’s seal, but a simple black square crossed by a white line.
“Do you know it?” Iven asked.
“No.”
Edren took the authorization and counted Tavin’s coins. He wrote a receipt, lowered the wheel with a chain, and let Iven inspect it on the floor. The bearing surface was clean. The hub had no visible crack. Neri checked the flange and the axle seat, then had Jem mark the wheel for a proper load test after installation.
The wheel belonged to the transport office now, conditional representative or not. Tavin had a receipt that said so. He tucked it inside his coat and put both hands on the rim.
“Let’s take it home,” he said.
They rolled the wheel through the freight lane with Iven on one side and Tavin on the other. It was heavy but well balanced. People moved aside as it passed. At the bridge, the new bolts held while they pushed it across one cart at a time, exactly as Neri’s revised limit allowed.
On the far side, Iven looked back toward the storage shed. The messenger had left by the rear door again. A person could reserve a wheel without a name, charge more than a working crew wanted to pay, and insist on watching it installed. Any one of those things might have an innocent explanation. Together they made him want to know who would arrive in the morning.