The air inside the pipe hub chamber was thickening, the faint hissing from the upper steam mains growing more distinct as the morning shift stoked the blast stoves above.
Tomas Reed knelt beside Nessa Vale beneath the overhang of the shattered casting. In his right hand he held the horn lantern close to the stone footing. In his left, he held his bone-handled razor knife, its blade ready to clear the hardened scale that crusted the lower mounting pipe rim.
There, wrapped around a two-inch steel stud that held the relief-valve body to the pipe hub, sat an oval tag of heavy sheet copper, three inches long and two inches wide. The wire holding it to the stud was not ordinary iron binding wire. It was three-ply twisted copper wire. It was sealed at the twisted knot with a flattened wafer of lead bearing the stamped crest of the Bellwether Municipal Boiler Board.
“The original factory check tag,” Nessa whispered, her fingers carefully steadying the wire so it didn’t snap under the tension of the scale. “Look at the date stamped on the rim: Year 021, Month 10, Day 12.”
“Two days before the blowout,” Tomas noted, his voice flat.
