The rail moved when Joss stopped trying to move it.
He stood beside the eastern receiver bed with his right hand on the frame strap.
Len and Davi lifted the new half from its barrow.
Tan called the turn.
Two other workers shifted the rear end onto blocks.
For a few seconds, six ordinary people kept the iron steady between them.
Then one block split.
“Down,” Tan said.
They lowered the rail together.
Joss looked at the broken block.
Damp wood beneath a dry surface.
Tan turned it over so everyone could see.
“Test the bottom too,” she said.
They replaced it and tried again.
Morning sunlight reached the bridge while they worked.
Joss had slept six hours upright in the cookhouse.
His ribs still hurt when he coughed.
That hurt had become less frightening once Tan told him what it meant and which changes would mean something worse.
The bridge frame remained sixty-two, steady on its bank supports.
Tan had placed a ladder of supports along the receiver bed.
Each group of workers lifted only to the next one.
The iron never crossed an open gap large enough to drag them off their footing if a hand slipped.
“Forward six inches,” she called.
The rail moved six inches.
Joss steadied the folded span while the two receiver halves met.
Their teeth meshed.
The counterweight shoe sat below the joint, holding its line against the pier.
Nera turned the alignment catch without opening the delivery throat.
The frame drawing showed every support amber.
The dock workers stared at it.
It was a small drawing for the amount of sweat they’d spent changing it.
“Still needs a loaded test,” Nera said.
“Then the receiving assembly.”
“Today?” Emmett asked.
“Today.”
He smiled.
Edda arrived with a man carrying a trader’s pack.
The man’s boots were red with clay Joss hadn’t seen on the city roads.
“He’s been asking after Flint,” she said.
Joss didn’t move his hand from the strap.
“Krail’s wages book has my address.”
“This didn’t come from Krail.”
The trader opened a waterproof pouch.
Several letters lay inside, wrapped together with a length of cord.
“Picked them up at the western camps,” he said.
“Sold my mule before the scar crossing.
Then the city gate held me two days over a toll difference.
Didn’t know which Flint until your cookhouse started taking names.”
He gave Edda a folded sheet.
She passed it to Joss.
His own name was written across the front.
The J leaned too far left; the two lines in Flint nearly touched at the bottom.
He knew that hand before he opened the page.
Tan kept the strap from slipping across its block while he sat.
Joss unfolded the letter with his good hand.
Joss,
If you get this, don’t pay the man twice.
I paid to the city gate.
The rest is supposed to be included.
I’m alive.
I couldn’t write that first because I kept looking at it and starting again.
People got across after the collapse.
Some of us kept going west when the marked road failed.
I’ve been surveying supports.
There are families here who can’t move until somebody teaches them which ground will hold.
I’ve been trying to be that somebody.
I sent two letters before this.
I don’t know where they stopped.
I still have the knife you said was too small to be useful.
It has repaired more things than your big one ever did.
Don’t come through Blue Scar on the old south marks.
They lead into a closed stone seam.
Ask western haulers for the moving survey posts.
And don’t go alone because you’re angry with me.
I am trying to get people home.
I can’t leave them standing on bad ground to prove I remember ours.
Bess.
Below her name, she had drawn a little cart with one wheel larger than the other.
As children, they’d used it as a signature on notes they didn’t want adults to read.
Bess always insisted the wrong wheel was his.
Joss pressed his thumb against the drawing.
The date beside it was twelve days old.
For two years, he’d imagined a body under broken stone, or a stranger who had taken her name, or an apology arriving too late to do anyone good.
The actual page asked him to read a bad route carefully and stop arguing about knives.
He laughed once, then couldn’t do it again because of his ribs.
Edda put a cup of water beside him.
She didn’t ask whether he was all right.
The trader waited while Joss read the letter a second time.
“Where?” he asked.
“Camp meeting beyond the western toll line.
The people carrying letters weren’t all from one place.
I didn’t ask which settlement she came from.”
“You saw her?”
“Young woman.
Survey hooks.
Told me to keep this pouch higher than my flour.”
Joss nodded.
He wanted to ask the man every question that two years could hold.
None would turn the meeting into an address the trader didn’t know.
At the receiver bed, a worker called for the next alignment.
Tan looked toward him, then back to Joss.
“You could rest.”
He folded the letter into the driest part of his coat.
“I’m finishing the bridge.”
“And after?”
“I ask haulers for the right survey marks.
I don’t take the south road.”
She glanced at the tools beside the receiver bed, then at the repaired plate on Latch.
“I won’t ask you to come because you saw the letter,” he said.
“Good.
Ask me what the trip needs.
Then I’ll know whether I can do it.”
He put the survey hook beside the receiver sketch.
The scratched mark no longer had to bear all the proof alone.
It was a used tool, useful because somebody would need to measure depth again.
Tan picked it up and checked its broken shaft.
“I can make a handle for that.”
“She’ll say you put it on wrong.”
“Then she can show me a better one.”
The simple future in that answer caught him harder than the letter had.
He looked back at the drawing of the crooked cart until he could trust his voice.
At the rail bed, the workers were arguing about which end needed the first loaded barrel.
One pointed to the pier; the other wanted to check the joint.
They were both right about something.
Joss went back and helped choose the order instead of trying to finish the test alone.
Edda checked the paid delivery cord and recorded the trader’s name beside the date.
They began the loaded test after breakfast.
Sand barrels crossed the temporary span on a towline.
Workers remained on the bank.
Tan watched the receiver joint, Nera the old frame, and Joss the path where pressure would go if something failed.
The joint held.
The barrels reached the other bank.
No plank vanished.
The district applauded.
Joss let himself hear it before the toll bells sounded on the upper road.