The first rib was finished by the fourteenth hour, and the second was in the furnace.
Mara stood at the bench with the tally book open. The first rib lay on its rack along the chamber’s wall, its reversed folds settled, its mirror lining cut from one half of Tal’s split sheet and laid along the inner face at thirty-one degrees, checked against Anwen’s card. It had passed four quench cycles on its offcut and its own trace showed a smooth slope from shoulder to core. It was ready to seat.
The second was behind Tavin’s shields in the furnace, in its first zone, Sen’s heater bands glowing on its shoulders.
On the shared gauge on the well’s screen, the water reserve’s line climbed. Slowly. Rationed to the pulses, as Sen had set it: the valve opened at each pulse and closed between. But each pulse spent a little more. The east half’s temperature crept toward the red stop on the plate. Eshel read it every hour on the Cinder link. It was nearer the line than it had been at dawn. Much nearer.
And the third rib needed more mirror iron than they had.
Mara looked at the tally. The column headed Clean sheets, tested, in the yard clerk’s ink and then in her own. Sheets drawn for Hearth’s return. For Lorn’s. For Tal’s, with one split. Below that, in her hand, the split sheet’s two halves, logged as offcuts: too short to line a channel section, long enough…
