The guild answered before noon.
Mara had not asked it to, or known it would. She had gone back to the bench after the window lapsed and stood at the bench model with its nine coils and its drifting governor, and tried to think of anything else she could do with four days, and could not. And at the fourth bell the guild lawyer came through the yard gate with the guild clerk behind her, the one with the ledger, and the clerk had a new sheet of paper in his hand.
“The guild has closed three freight lines,” the lawyer said. “Nonessential ones. The river barge line, the night coal run to the dye works, and the second shift on the north crane. As of the fourth bell.” She nodded at the clerk. “Their power allotments are donated. To the brace. Read it.”
The clerk read the donation list aloud. The three freight lines, and beside each one, its power allotment: the units of Hearth’s draw that the line had been licensed to use, which it would now not use, and which the guild was giving to the yard for the brace test. The office imposed cuts. This was a gift: power the guild had a right to, set aside.
