Just past midnight, the governor lagged again.
Mara was at the bench when it happened. She had not gone to bed. Nobody on the crew had, except Brisk, who could sleep anywhere and was asleep on her sacks with her cap over her face. The brace had been holding since the afternoon, since the last seam, the ring closed and the governor steady in its pocket. Eshel had moved the governor’s repeater down to the common bench on a long line from the scaffold so they could watch it from the yard. A small brass dial with a needle, and beside it a paper strip that crawled slowly under a pen, drawing a line.
The line had been flat for nine hours.
At a quarter past midnight, it jumped.
Eshel saw it first. He was at the bench with his slate, writing up the afternoon’s figures, and his head came up at the sound of the pen, a quick scratch that was louder than the slow drawing it had done all evening.
“Load’s up,” he said. “Sharp.”
Mara was beside him in two steps. The needle on the repeater had swung hard to the right. The line on the paper strip had a spike in it, a tall thin peak. And the governor’s own dial, beside it, showed the lag: a fraction late, the pocket working to catch up.
