Tavin took the catches in hand before anyone touched a screw.
He went round the gantry’s frame in the lamplight. Four corners. At each one, a screw with its square head. And above, on the hook’s frame, four catches: steel pawls against toothed wheels, one for each sling. When the screws turned, the frame would drop a fraction. The slings would take the weight off the pawls, the pawls would lift and fall into the next tooth down, and the load would rest on them again. A fraction at a time. Turn, drop, catch. Turn, drop, catch.
If a pawl failed to seat, the next turn would drop the load onto nothing.
“Light,” he said.
Sen came with her lamp. She held it up, high, over the first catch. The light fell on the pawl and the wheel and the tooth.
Tavin looked.
Seated. The pawl’s tip square in the tooth’s root. No gap.
He did not trust it. He had not trusted his eyes since the first look at the seed ring. He held out his hand.
