Sera stood at the route board in the yard office and tapped the first column.
It was afternoon. Mara had dictated the list backwards in the morning, from none up to the taste of metal, and three lines had changed: the humming had moved from eight seconds to nine, her mother’s hand had become a pressure on the shoulder, and the chair’s knot had gone altogether. Tavin had marked each change in the margin without comment. Then the doctor had come and changed the dressing and let her sit at the office desk, if she kept the arm in the sling.
So now she was at the desk. And Sera was at the route board.
The route board was new. Sera had brought it up from the Tern that morning: a flat display panel from the Tern’s chart room, propped against the office wall on two bricks, linked by cable to the Tern’s relay. It showed the routes the Compact had opened. Cinder to Sorrel. Cinder to Whitlow. The lanes through Compact space, now permitted for guild-named harvest crews under the joint custody terms. And beside each lane, two columns of figures: hazards along the route, and their estimated danger.
