The fleet’s manifest lay open on the yard bench at dawn, and the cargo pod’s line had a red stroke through it.
The fleet had not landed yet. It was still a day out, crawling home with the cutter on four tow lines and the Bellwether’s rough engine running at half thrust to save fuel. But the Fallow Hand’s captain had sent the manifest down the relay in the night, every item the fleet had carried out and every item it was carrying back, and the yard’s printer had run it off, and the yard’s clerk had laid it on the bench.
Mara sat on the stool at the bench’s end with her sling and looked at it.
Eshel’s counts were on it, in pencil, in three columns he had ruled down the manifest’s margin. Sheets in the Fallow Hand’s hold. Sheets in the Tern’s. Sheets in the pod.
The pod’s column had a red stroke through it. Eshel had drawn it at the fourth hour, when the Fallow Hand’s captain confirmed the pod was beyond recovery: tumbling outward past the lattice’s edge, too fast for any tug, its beacon fading.
The figure beneath the stroke could still be read through the red.
