A year after Hearth’s repair, an invitation came down the Compact’s old relay.
It arrived at the yard office’s console on a grey morning in the cold months, while Mara was at the common bench with two students and a cracked valve seat. The console chimed. It was older than the Board’s chime, or the guild’s, or the trust’s: three notes, which nobody had heard in years: the Compact’s long-range relay, the line the patrols had used before the coup, which the Board had kept open and nobody had ever used since.
Pell was at the desk. He looked at the console. Then he called her.
“Mara,” he said. “You’ll want this.”
His voice was very calm. That was how Mara knew it mattered.
It was a request.
On the console’s screen, in the old route format, a message. Short. Formal. Addressed not to Mara by name but to the Common Forge at Cinder, which meant whoever had sent it had read the trust’s record, because that was where the Common Forge was named.
A request to inspect a lamp.
