Asa had written the names on strips of cloth because paper curled in the kitchen’s steam.
They hung from a line above the long table, each strip tied with a single knot. A name meant a place had been found for someone displaced by the turn. A second knot meant that place needed fuel, bedding, or food before the family could move in. Three knots meant the offer had failed and the search had to begin again.
Iven counted six strips with three knots.
“Don’t untie them,” Asa said without looking up. “They aren’t a puzzle.”
“I was counting.”
“That can be worse.”
She was ladling porridge into bowls while Vale cut a loaf into slices. The kitchen was full of people who had slept elsewhere and come here because it was warm, because they needed breakfast, or because they knew the kitchen would be told something before the official notices reached their street.
A little girl sat on the floor beneath the line, making a house from blocks of wood. She placed one block upright, balanced another across it, and waited for the top piece to fall. When it did, she nodded as if the fall had confirmed a private theory.
Iven crouched beside her. “Would you like help?”
“No.”
“Good. I charge a great deal.”
“What do you charge?”
“Breakfast.”
She looked at the bowl in his hand. “You already have it.”
“Then you’ve saved your money.”
The girl pushed the blocks closer together and balanced the top one again. This time it held. She looked at him, waiting. He resisted the urge to explain why. The explanation belonged to her discovery.
Asa set a bowl on the table above them. “Miri, your mother said you could have the honey if you finished the porridge.”
Miri looked at the bowl and then at the blocks. “Can the house eat it?”
“The house can have the spoon after you.”
Miri accepted this and climbed onto the bench.
Iven sat opposite her. The porridge was thick with oats and small pieces of dried fruit. He ate quickly until Vale moved the honey jar out of his reach.
“That’s for the children,” she said.
“I’m young.”
“You’re old enough to know why that argument won’t work.”
Neri came in with her coat damp from the morning air. Her crew had inspected the bridge’s far bolts again. The new plate had not shifted. A handcart could cross under the revised limit, and she had sent a runner to tell the clinic.
“Cage Seven’s wheel?” Asa asked.
“Still running smoothly. Tavin checked it after the first full shift.”
“Then I can move the blankets today.”
“Not all at once,” Neri said. “The cage limit is restored, not abolished.”
Asa pointed to the cloth strips. “I’ve got six places that might take them. I need to know which ones can be warmed before I send families up.”
“I can look at two after breakfast.”
“You have your own work.”
“Yes. I can look at two after it.”
Asa accepted that. Iven noticed the exchange because neither woman had offered to abandon her responsibilities for the other’s. They had made room where they could and left the remaining work visible.
Brin arrived carrying a bundle of messages and a small wooden box. He put the messages in front of Vale, then opened the box to reveal six brass screws.
“For the washhouse passage,” he said. “The mason asked for the wider heads.”
“Did he pay you?” Vale asked.
“He gave me a roll.”
“Did you eat it?”
“Half.”
“Then you can have half a bowl.”
Brin looked at the porridge. “The other half of the roll was yesterday.”
Vale gave him a full bowl. Iven watched him take it to the window and begin reading one of the messages between spoonfuls.
“What have you got?”
“Notice from the transport board. They’re reopening a route through the rear stores.”
“Why was it closed?”
“Damage after the turn. They say the floor’s been inspected.”
Neri held out her hand. Brin gave her the notice. She read it, then asked who had inspected the floor.
“It doesn’t say,” he replied.
“Then I’ll look before they send carts through.”
“That’s what I thought you’d say.”
“Did you bring it here because you knew I’d say it?”
“I brought it because Tavin told me to. Knowing what you’d say made the trip more pleasant.”
The door opened again. A woman in a dark work coat stood on the threshold with a small package wrapped in brown cloth. Iven recognized her before she spoke. She was the widow of one of the nine workers killed at the Sixth Lift pump. He had seen her twice at Vale’s kitchen and once outside the old maintenance office. He had never given her money directly.
Vale rose to greet her. “Lora. Is the room still warm?”
“For now. The window doesn’t close properly.” Lora placed the package on the table. “I brought the names you asked for.”
Asa unfolded the cloth. Inside was a list of people who had worked at the pump before the accident, with notes beside several names. Some had moved to other districts. One had left Mercy on a freight transfer. Two had died since the accident, neither from injuries sustained there.
“Why the list?” Iven asked.
Lora looked at him. “The board wants to know whether the old pump crew can help identify the replacement parts they used. The current records don’t agree with the parts in storage.”
Iven felt the spoon against his fingers. He set it down carefully.
“Who asked?”
“A man from the maintenance office. He came to the room yesterday.”
“Did he give a name?”
“Olan Reeve.”
The kitchen continued around them. A pot scraped over the stove. Brin asked Miri whether her wooden house needed a roof. The sounds seemed to come from a little farther away than before, though Iven’s hearing was clear.
Olan had supervised the pump job. He had told Iven the suspect pressure reading was an instrument fault and pressed him to sign the approval. Iven had signed. He had known enough to ask for another check, and he had not asked strongly enough. Nine people had died when the pump burst.
“Did he say why now?” Iven asked.
“He said the turn disturbed a storage rack and they found parts that didn’t match the later inventory.” Lora watched him. “You worked there.”
“Yes.”
“Do you remember which pump was fitted?”
“I remember the housing and the pressure gauge. I’d need to see the parts to be sure.”
“Then perhaps you can tell him that.”
She did not accuse him. She had no reason to know which name appeared on the approval. That made the invitation harder, not easier.
Asa folded the list. “I’ll give this to the families who want it shared. Some won’t want him coming to their door.”
“He didn’t tell me I had to answer,” Lora said.
“Did he tell you what the parts were for?”
“He said he wanted to correct the record.”
“Then he can tell the families what he found before he asks them to do his work.”
Lora considered, then nodded. “I’ll tell him.”
She took a bowl of porridge to the end of the table. Iven watched her sit beside another woman from the damaged lane. They spoke about a window, a child who needed boots, and whether the rain would reach the bedding hung beneath the awning. Neither looked toward him again.
Neri saw that he had stopped eating. “You know him?”
“Olan was my supervisor.”
“At the pump?”
“Yes.”
She waited. Iven could have said more. The kitchen was crowded, Asa was two steps away, and Lora had come for breakfast and a list of names, not for a public accounting from a man who had kept silent for months.
“I’m going to see what he found,” he said.
Neri did not press him. “Take someone who can remember the parts without him telling them what to remember.”
“I can remember parts.”
“I know. Take someone anyway.”
After breakfast, he walked with her to the rear stores. The route passed the damaged lane where the upper wall had come down. Crews had cleared a path through the rubble, but the ground beside it remained covered with boards, broken furniture, and pieces of roof tile stacked for sorting. A woman was looking through a pile of crockery, turning each piece in her hands before setting it aside.
“Anything useful?” Neri asked.
The woman held up a bowl with a crack across the bottom. “It won’t hold soup. It might hold onions.”
“That’s useful.”
The woman set it in the basket marked keep. Iven helped move a beam that had rolled against the pile. Underneath it lay a child’s tin wheel and a bent nail. He recognized it from the rope-shop landing, where a girl had played with it before the collapse. He picked it up and gave it to the woman.
“She made it herself,” she said. “I thought it was gone.”
“Is she safe?”
“She and her brother are with their aunt. Their grandfather isn’t.”
Iven knew the name from Asa’s list. Arlen. He had died in the rope-shop landing collapse before Mercy turned, separate from both the later disaster and the nine pump deaths. The numbers had become easy to say. The wheel in the woman’s hand made one of them difficult again.
At the rear stores, the transport notice hung beside the closed route. The inspection mark was fresh, but the floor beneath the first cart wheel had a dark stain around one support plate. Neri knelt and pressed her thumb against the seam.
“Water under it.”
“From above?”
“Or from the pipe beside it. We need to lift the plate.”
The store crew brought a jack. Iven helped raise the plate while Neri inspected the support. A small leak had collected beneath it, softening the packing around one bolt. The floor was not about to collapse, but a loaded cart could make the plate shift enough to catch a wheel.
Neri closed the route again until the packing was replaced. The foreman complained that the board had already approved it. She showed him the water and asked whether he wanted his cart to demonstrate the difference between approval and support.
He did not.
Iven stayed until the crew had a safe way around the affected section. The work was ordinary compared with the vent-hook, and he was grateful for that. He did not need every morning to contain a creature with hooks for hands.
At the maintenance office, Olan was not present. A clerk told Iven he had gone to the old pump store and might return before evening. Iven left his name and asked where the store was. The clerk gave him a location in the middle saddle and warned that the road had been damaged during the turn.
“I can use the upper route,” Iven said.
“You can. It’s longer.”
“I’m beginning to recognize the pattern.”
Outside, he found Neri waiting beside the notice board. She held two cups of tea, one of which she gave him without asking whether he wanted it.
“Did you find him?”
“No.”
“Will you?”
“Yes.”
She did not ask why he sounded certain. They drank while workers moved around them, carrying the new support packing into the stores. The tea was too hot. Iven burned his tongue and refused to show it.
Neri watched him swallow. “You could wait.”
“I’ve had enough advice for one cup.”
“Then I’ll save the rest.”
He looked toward the middle saddle. Olan had appeared at a widow’s door with a question about a pump that had killed her husband. Iven did not know whether his former supervisor wanted to correct the record, protect himself, or both. He did know that waiting for the answer in the kitchen would leave Lora and the other families to carry the questions alone.
He finished the tea and returned the cup. “I’ll go tomorrow.”
Neri took the cup. “Tell me if you need help carrying anything back.”
He almost said he would. The promise would have been easy to make and difficult to use. Instead he said, “I might.”
She nodded as if that were enough for now.