Before the second cycle closed, Mara sat at the frame bench with a stick of plate chalk and wrote the names of her team.
The frame bench stood under the Quiet Forge’s outer hall window, where Hearth’s new light came in gold with its pale edge and lay across the iron. The frame plate on the wall above it still carried the abort route cut deep into the metal, and the track’s drawing, and 38 s, and the two lines Eshel had drawn: the seal’s closing and the outlets’ schedule, one ending before the other. Below them Mara had wiped a clean space.
She wrote the names in a column. Sera. Anwen. Eshel. Tavin. Doss. Lisan. Nemi. Pell. Gell. Brisk. The three foremen. And she wrote beside each one where she wanted them.
Meridian, with her: her strongest people. That was the first thought. Sera, because the Tern was Sera’s and nobody else could fly it into a sealed well’s dock. Anwen, because Anwen could read a seam. Eshel, because Eshel read figures twice. Tavin, because Tavin was Tavin.
She looked at the column. Then she wiped it out with her sleeve and wrote it again.
The second version was different. It sent fewer people to Meridian. Lorn’s return needed hands. Tal’s needed metal carried to it. Hearth’s new heart needed watching. Cinder’s link needed someone at it. She wrote the names again, and moved them, and the column came out the same length but with the names spread across…
