The inkwell on the desk was half-frozen.
Mara had to rest the small ceramic pot against the warm chimney of the kerosene lamp for five minutes before the black fluid loosened enough to coat the steel nib. Her right hand was stiff, the skin around her scraped palm itching with the tight, dry pull of healing tissue, while her eyes burned with the stinging exhaustion of forty-eight hours without unbroken sleep.
Omar and the district custodian reached the farm case before the meeting. Tessa tested four full six-unit cells and a degraded cell marked two: twenty-six delivered, the last of Candlewake’s cache share. The owner received the promised repaired sleeves; the escort had spent the last two district gallons.
With yesterday’s sealed six, that made thirty-two here. Tonight’s thirteen and tomorrow’s thirteen would leave only the emergency six. Mara kept that line beside the empty working-stock box.
Through the frosted window of the office, she could see Miller Cole’s daughter sitting on the woodpile in the gray dawn light, clutching a headless rag doll to her chest. In the charged infirmary Five, Cole lay on the spare cot, groaning softly every time he drew a breath against the four dressed puncture wounds in his shoulder.
