Mara was at the socket fitting bench, measuring the first rib’s seat with feeler blocks, when Eshel’s flag came over the freight relay.
The socket fitting bench was new. Sen’s crew had built it on the cold side, at the passage’s mouth, from the guild’s spare timber: a narrow bench set against the lattice’s outer skin, beside the first open socket, where the ribs would be fitted. The first rib was in the passage now, on a cradle of timber on rails that Tavin had built to carry it along the passage to its socket. Mara was measuring the socket’s seat. Every face of it. With the feeler blocks from Tavin’s bundle, one leaf at a time, reading the gap by feel.
The seat had to be clean and square to a fraction before the rib went in. One leaf too thick and the rib would sit proud. One too thin and it would rock.
She had the third leaf in the seat’s lower face when the relay chimed.
“A clinic,” Eshel said. On the freight relay, two days from Meridian now. “On the upper terraces. It’s drawing a load well beyond its share.”
Mara kept the leaf where it was.
