The long day had no end that anyone could see.
It had begun before the Tern landed and gone through the gate and Halvek’s file and the guild hall and the radiator, and now it was well past Hearth’s rising and still going, because the guild had sent word at first light that three of its shops would work straight through the morning on the channels if Mara could hand over what the shops needed at once. Nobody on the crew had slept. Mara could not remember the last time she had. Sable, perhaps. The hub’s floor.
The three foremen came to the yard within the hour.
One from the River Mill works, who had made the fifth brace segment. One from the Coil Stair Works, who had made the sixth. And one from the guild’s own shop, Anwen’s foreman, a lean grey man named in the guild’s register but called by everyone simply the foreman. They stood at the common bench under the work lamp, in their leather aprons, and looked at what Mara had laid out.
The certified test channel, cooled, its mirror iron lining dull silver under the lamp. The rotating fixture with its brass tag, AXIS, NOT SURFACE. The crate tag with the orientation and the allowed error. And Eshel’s two pages, side by side, the matching runs.
