The bridge console sat in the frame bay, under the high window, and Mara put her hand on its edge.
It had not been there yesterday. Cant had raised it that afternoon, from a recess in the Quiet Forge’s outer wall that nobody in the yard had known was there: a narrow desk of grey alloy, rising out of the floor on a column, with a plate set into its top like the keeper’s plate in the shrine and a screen above. The bridge’s own console. The place where, in the Founders’ time, a keeper had stood to read the bridge and the lamps at its other end.
Cant had raised it because the Board had asked. At noon, on the relay, under the joint custody terms, the Sunward Board had granted Mara the bridge permission. A further tier, beyond the forge load authority: the right to read the bridge’s traffic directly, through the console, as the old keepers had. Witnessed. For the bridge and the lamps it touched. Lisan had countersigned it as the keeper. Nemi had signed it for the shelters.
Mara sat at the console now, in the afternoon light from the high window. Hearth’s new light, gold with its pale edge.
