The middle saddle smelled of vinegar, wet rope, and a kind of expensive soap that Iven associated with people who had never had to clear a blocked drain.
He arrived on foot after taking the upper route around the damaged road. The journey had carried him past three separate work crews, two guarded storage yards, and a row of houses whose windows had been replaced since Mercy’s turn. The houses stood straighter than the buildings in Rung Ward. They also had fewer people sleeping in their doorways.
The old pump store occupied a brick building beside a narrow service canal. Its windows were shuttered. A sign above the door gave the maintenance office’s name in letters so faded that the shadows inside them were easier to read than the paint.
Iven knocked. No one answered. He tried the latch and found it locked.
Across the canal, a woman was stripping old paint from a railing with a broad knife. She watched him test the latch.
“If you’re here for the parts,” she said, “they took the first load this morning.”
“Who did?”
“Two men from maintenance and a driver.”
“Did one of them have a gray coat with a split cuff?”
“One had a gray coat. I didn’t inspect his cuffs.”
“Where did they go?”
“Toward the Sixth Lift.”
Iven looked along the canal. The lift rose beyond a line of workshops, its cage hidden behind a screen of metal slats. He had not been near it since the old pump burst. He had taken other routes, other jobs, and eventually work in Rung Ward. None had required him to look at the place where nine people had died.
“Thank you,” he said.
The woman continued scraping the railing. “If you’re one of their workers, tell them the cart leaked oil all the way to the corner. Someone will slip.”
“I’ll tell them.”
He walked toward the lift. The canal carried warm water beneath a row of pipes. On the far side, a group of children were launching folded paper boats from a step. One boat caught in a slow eddy. Its owner reached for it with a stick and nearly lost the stick too.
Iven stopped long enough to show him how to draw the boat toward the edge using the current instead of pushing against it. The boy recovered the paper, unfolded it, and revealed that it had once been a notice about water allotments.
“Your parents might want that,” Iven said.
“They said it was old.”
“Then it’s probably more useful as a boat.”
The boy folded it again and launched it downstream. Iven watched it pass beneath a pipe, then continued.
The Sixth Lift landing had been rebuilt. New boards covered the place where the pump room’s outer wall had failed. A brass plate fixed beside the gate listed the names of the dead. It did not give their occupations or ages. It did not say whose signature appeared on the approval.
Iven stood before it longer than he intended. He knew the names, but reading them in a row made them different from the small payments he sent through Vale’s fund. Leda Pell was third. Lora’s husband was sixth. The ninth name belonged to a young worker who had joined the crew only a week before the failure.
A man came out of the landing office carrying a coil of hose. He saw Iven at the plate and slowed.
“Are you looking for someone?”
“Olan Reeve.”
“He’s below. They’re checking the old inventory.”
“Can I go down?”
“Not without a work slip.”
“Can you tell him Iven Marr is here?”
The man’s expression changed at the name. Not recognition, exactly. He had heard it somewhere and was deciding whether it belonged to a problem.
“I’ll tell him,” he said.
He went inside. Iven remained beside the plate. The lift cage moved behind the slats, its chain making a regular sound as it rose. He found himself listening for a break in the rhythm, as if the old pump might still be connected to it.
The man returned with a message. “Olan says he’ll meet you at the canal gate.”
“Why not here?”
“He didn’t say.”
The canal gate stood behind the pump store, where a narrow path ran between the water and the wall. Iven found Olan there with a wooden crate at his feet. He was older than Iven remembered, or perhaps the months had only made the lines around his eyes easier to see. His gray coat had the split cuff the woman had noticed. He held it closed with two fingers when he saw Iven.
“I wondered whether you’d come,” Olan said.
“You went to Lora’s room.”
“I asked whether she knew where the old crew had gone.”
“Why?”
“The turn brought down a storage rack. We found parts that weren’t in the later inventory.”
“What parts?”
Olan opened the crate. Inside lay a pressure gauge, two valves, and a short length of pipe with a threaded fitting at one end. Iven recognized the gauge housing. The glass had been replaced, but a shallow dent remained at the lower rim where it had struck a railing during installation.
“That was on the pump.”
“Yes.”
“The report said it was destroyed.”
“The report said the assembly was destroyed. Some parts were recovered.”
“By whom?”
“I don’t know.”
Iven picked up the gauge. It was heavier than he remembered. The needle rested below zero, suggesting either the spring had failed or the gauge had been opened and incorrectly reset. He turned it over. A small mark had been scratched beside the access screw: two parallel lines and a dot.
“Is that yours?” he asked.
Olan leaned closer. “No.”
“Did you see it before?”
“I don’t remember.”
“You told me the reading was an instrument fault.”
“I told you the gauge had been unreliable.”
“You told me it was safe to approve the pump.”
Olan looked toward the canal. A barge was moving slowly past the far wall, its deck stacked with empty barrels. The driver stood at the stern, using a pole to keep the load away from the masonry.
“I believed it was,” he said.
Iven had imagined this conversation often enough to know that an honest answer would not necessarily sound satisfying. Olan might have believed the pump safe. Iven had also seen the needle rise beyond the expected range. He had signed anyway, because Olan had authority, because the work was late, and because refusing would have meant a fight he had not wanted to have.
“Why ask the families about parts?” he said.
“Because the old crew may have seen the replacement valve before it was fitted. The parts list says one model. The piece in this crate is another.”
“Which one was installed?”
“That’s what I’m trying to establish.”
“You could have come to me.”
Olan’s gaze returned to his face. “I thought you wouldn’t want to see me.”
“That was correct.”
“And?”
“And you still should have come.”
Olan accepted that without defending himself. It made Iven angrier than an argument might have. He wanted the other man to deny something clearly enough that he could strike it down. Instead he had a crate of damaged parts and a person who seemed as tired of carrying them as he was.
A shout rose from the canal. The barge had caught against a loose bracket. Its load shifted. One barrel rolled across the deck and struck the side rail. The driver lunged for it, missed, and nearly went over with it.
Iven ran to the edge. The barrel was wedged against the rail, holding the barge at an angle. The current pushed the stern toward a low bridge where two workers were carrying a long sheet of metal. If the barge struck the bridge, the sheet could fall into the canal and take the workers with it.
“Move back!” Iven shouted.
The workers looked toward him. One began to lift the sheet; the other froze. The barge driver caught his pole against the wall and pushed, but the pole slipped on wet stone.
Iven seated hook cast, winch draw, and plate brace. He cast the hook to a sound iron ring beside the bridge and tied his physical rope around the barge’s nearest cleat. The first pull drew the bow away from the wall but also pulled him toward the canal. He braced his boots against a stone lip and let the anchor take the strain.
The barge moved a few inches. The barrel rolled again, striking the rail. Olan had followed him and now caught the rope’s loose end around a post.
“Hold it there,” Iven said.
Olan did. Iven released the winch, ran to the bridge, and raised a plate brace beneath the sheet of metal. The two workers carried it back from the edge. The barge scraped past the bridge support instead of striking it directly.
The driver used the moment to push the stern away with his pole. The barrel settled against a second stack. The barge drifted into the center of the canal and stopped against a mooring line farther down.
The driver sat on the deck, breathing hard. “The bracket’s loose.”
“I noticed,” Iven said.
One of the bridge workers pointed to the damaged bracket. Its lower bolt had pulled away from the wall, leaving the upper bolt to twist under the load. The worker tied a cloth around it to warn the next barge until the canal crew could replace it.
Olan brought Iven’s rope back. “You could have pulled the barge yourself.”
“Not the whole way. The current was doing part of the work.”
“You’ve become a restorer.”
“I’ve become a person with a rope and a better reason to use it.”
Olan looked at the graft along Iven’s left arm. “I heard you were at the gate.”
“You heard correctly.”
“I also heard you were in the lower passages when the city turned.”
“A lot of people were.”
“Not all of them came back.”
The words were not a challenge. Iven could not decide whether that made them easier to hear.
They returned to the crate. Olan had a copy of the later inventory, with a line through the gauge’s entry and a note that the assembly had been destroyed. He also had a newer note from the storage crew listing the parts found after the rack fell.
“Will you let me compare these?” Iven asked.
“Here.”
“I want a copy.”
“I’m not authorized to release the original.”
“I didn’t ask for it.”
Olan hesitated. “The maintenance office may object.”
“Then tell them I asked.”
The supervisor took a pencil from his pocket and copied the two entries onto a clean sheet. Iven watched him write. When Olan finished, Iven checked the dates and the model numbers against the originals. One number had been written unclearly; Olan corrected it and initialed the change.
“Who made the later inventory?” Iven asked.
“A clerk from the central office. I signed that the recovered parts had been transferred.”
“Did you see the gauge?”
“I saw a crate. I didn’t open it.”
“Why not?”
“I was told the investigation team had finished with it.”
Iven looked at the dented housing. The part had survived, and Olan had signed for a crate without checking what it contained. That did not prove the pressure reading had been false. It did prove that another person had accepted an answer because an office had supplied it.
“I want to see the pump room,” he said.
“It’s sealed.”
“Is it unsafe?”
“Part of it. The outer room can be entered with a guide.”
“Will you take me?”
Olan closed the crate. “Not today.”
“Why?”
“The guide is at the forward station. I won’t take you into a damaged room alone.”
“You went to Lora before you had the guide.”
“I went to ask questions.”
“And I’m asking one.”
Olan held his gaze. “Tomorrow. I’ll arrange the guide and tell you when.”
Iven wanted to refuse the delay. The room had waited for months. A day would not make the parts less important, and forcing the door without a guide might destroy what remained. He folded the copy and put it inside his coat.
“Tell me directly,” he said. “Don’t send another family to find me.”
“I will.”
On the return route, Iven stopped at the brass plate again. Someone had placed a small paper boat beneath it. The paper was damp at the edge, but the folds held. He looked toward the canal and saw the boy waving from the step.
Iven raised a hand. The boy did not know why the names were there, or perhaps he did and had chosen the boat anyway. Iven left it in place.