The morning frost on Day 94 held fast to the slate flags around the irrigation water tank, silvering the edges of the water trough where thin sheets of ice cracked like eggshells under the dipping bucket. Cold air settled deep into the throat of Alderfast, sharp with the tang of pine smoke, wet shale. The bitter stone bite of the tailings heaps piled high on the western shoulder.
Kezra Venn sat at the scrubbed pine bench near the water tank water chute, her numbed fingertips smoothing out a broad sheet of stiff rag paper. Across the pale thick parchment, dark charcoal lines traced the upright cross-section of the newly opened southern gallery. She had drawn the limestone rib, the fourteen-inch basal step. The sharp dogleg pinch that had jammed the six-foot wooden stretcher on Day 92. Above the constriction, she had inked three circular spreading eye-bolts into the roof rock, linked by dotted catenary curves to a pair of double-pulley wheel bronze pulleys and a said clearlycanvas harness.
“If Fellis splices a padded thigh spreader twenty-two inches wide,” Kezra said, looking across the table at Paxa Sel, “the frame will keep the lateral lines clear of Davren’s knee. Four haulers—two on the lower gallery threshold and two perched on the inner rock ledge—can maintain a steady four-to-one clockwork advantage. We lift him thirty inches, swing the foot-tray through the turn radius, and set him down on the Coldwork talus without his leg ever striking stone.”
