The North Gate of Bellwether smelled of wet lime, coal smoke, and the stale vinegar used to scrub the gatehouse floor after the night shift. By the fifth hour of morning, a steady line of two-wheeled handcarts stretched from the inner toll-yard out onto the cobbled raised stone road leading to the Great Northern Turnpike. Each cart was fitted with two broad ash wheels banded in quarter-inch iron hoops, piled high with gray canvas tarpaulins lashed down with tarred manila cord.
Apprentice Olla stood on an overturned salt barrel near the gate arch, her fingers blue with cold as she sorted through a sheaf of split-bamboo route slips. Each slip was four fingers wide and a foot long, notched on the left edge with the team’s numerical cipher and stamped on the right with the red wax impression of the Office of Unfinished Claims.
“Team One: Marek and Linnea,” Olla called out, her clear voice cutting through the clatter of iron hooves and the rumble of cart axles. “Assigned route: High Karst via the Old Lime Road. Twelve branch repositories in the mining cantons. Main target: The Great Northern Storehouse at Karst Citadel.”
A broad-shouldered young man with a patch over his left eye stepped up to the barrel, his hands buried deep in the pockets of his canvas cart driver coat. Behind him walked Linnea. Her fair hair was tucked beneath a heavy knitted wool cap, her leather folio satchel buckled tight across her ribs. Marek took his bamboo…
