In the control room the rib racks ticked as they cooled.
The control room was the operations office above the lowest chamber, where the well’s access terminal stood with its three seal slots. Sen’s crew had carried the first two ribs up there on the cage after they came off the fixture, to cool on racks along the window wall, away from the furnace’s heat. They lay side by side on their timber rests. Every few minutes one of them ticked: a small dry sound, the metal contracting as it gave up the last of its heat.
Mara was at the terminal. Sen beside her. The third rib’s strip was being forged below by Tavin, from the four cores. The water reserve’s line on the shared gauge was close to the red stop.
The well’s speaking door spoke.
A grille in the office’s wall, beside the terminal, which Mara had not noticed until the voice came through it. Brass, old, with the Founders’ mark above it. The chorus could speak through any wall in the well; it chose this one.
It spoke in the voice of the whole, all three clusters together, for once, the way it had spoken in Hearth’s shrine.
