The animal fat rushlight on Marta’s table burned with a clear, steady yellow flame.
Tomas Reed sat with his sleeves rolled up, his scarred left wrist buckled firmly into its calfskin brace to support his hand as he guided the heavy goose quill across the crown-stamped thick parchment. Beside him, Nessa Vale sat with her aimed sound tube aimed at Marta’s lips, transcribing every spoken syllable onto a backup duplicate docket.
“Speak at your own rhythm, Marta,” Tomas instructed, dipping his nib into the dark oak-ink. “State your full name, your parentage. The date you entered the service of the Lantern Company.”
Marta touched the carnelian stone of Alia Sen’s ring resting on the table before her.
“I’m Marta of the Lower Weirs, daughter of Dennis the parish clerk,” she stated. Her voice was calm, clear, and ringing with total certainty. “I was seventeen winters old in Year 14. I was bound as an apprentice nurse to Master Physician Alia Sen on the first day of the High Thaw.”
“Describe the health of the Delta population on the seventieth day of that season,” Tomas directed, his pen scratching across the thick parchment: scritch, scritch, scritch.
“On the seventieth day,” Marta said, “there wasn’t a single living soul within five miles of Willow Sluice with the red swellings. The last patient, young Jory of the Mill, had his carbuncles heal on Day 52. Dr. Sen examined all four hundred people in the solitude pens. Their skin was clean. Their tongues were…
