Tan stopped the wellhead test when Joss tried to add the food crate.
“That goes on the ordinary cart bed.
Away from the pressure foot.”
He moved it.
The line she’d chalked on the cradle became visible again: an empty outline where a burden of one hundred and forty would sit.
They didn’t have the wellhead yet.
They had its rated diagram, a weighted practice frame, and a receiver fitting Nera had cleared from beneath the tap house.
Tan had marked the supports so Joss could test the load path before meeting a damaged parcel twelve miles from home.
“Forty spare,” he said.
“For strain and prepared equipment.
Not a list of things you want because they fit physically.”
She placed the stabilization kit in a small strapped frame.
Sixteen burden under its tested seal.
The pressure stayed within his new capacity when he bound the two practice frames together, but the second mark on his wrist closed around the kit.
Two bindings.
No third, even for a tiny tool.
He unbound the practice loads once the test ended.
Both rested on their blocks while Tan checked the straps.
The wellhead would need sound ground at every stop just as the bridge had.
The first time he released the kit, its corner slipped into a gap between blocks.
Tan made him wait before binding it again.
“Put it where it can survive without your attention.”
He raised the low corner with an ordinary lever and reset the block.
Only then did he touch the prepared strap.
The second binding closed cleanly.
The reset block stayed square.
Both marks held closed while Tan walked around the frames, testing the corners with her hammer.
Tan put another weight on the practice cradle.
Its burden remained within one hundred and eighty.
His wrist stayed steady.
His ribs hurt when he tried pushing the loaded cart.
“That’s why I improved the wheel bearings,” she said.
“Capacity and hauling are different bills.”
She took the handle from him.
He walked beside her, checking the straps while she moved the heavy practice frame.
They would need stops he could maintain without carrying the whole thing in his arms.
They marked two low river platforms on the route card for that purpose.
Latch tested the new hinge plate by lifting its lid slowly.
One foot pressed against the lining.
Tan had rounded the plate to leave space for that movement instead of treating the living box as an exact square.
“Grip’s next,” she said.
“Let me see the pad.”
It offered the foot.
Joss took the three salt bricks Edda had brought from the chandler and stacked them below the ordinary food bed.
Tan added a fourth from her supply order.
Each cost one mark.
The wellhead’s seal oil needed salt to keep the draw-throat from leaking pressure into the outlet.
Four salt.
Two fresh oil flasks.
Wire and linen.
Three marks of food.
Four marks of wheel and brace reinforcement.
Fifteen of the twenty expense marks were gone.
Joss wrote each amount on the back of the route card.
Tan counted the flasks and salt beside him before putting away her pencil.
Their five remaining expense marks would have to cover unforeseen source work.
His own purse now held five, earned after paying the old meals and Dema’s lost rope from six ordinary deliveries at two marks each.
The fourth parcel he’d accepted at the laundry had reached its recipient during the second round.
Two more runs had come from people who’d seen the plate and watched him arrive without an authority escort.
Joss rolled one of the five coins across his knuckles.
It slipped and rang on the bench.
He caught it before Latch could investigate, then tried again.
The last customer waited outside Tan’s workshop.
A woman named Ossa had hired him to deliver a stove latch.
Her hands were black with coal dust.
“Put the medicine first,” she said when he showed her his route.
“My stove can wait an hour.”
“Your food can?”
“There’s a neighbor’s fire.
Aunt over the west bank doesn’t have a neighbor’s lungs.”
Joss changed the route and told the medicine recipient why he’d arrived early.
On the return trip, he fitted Ossa’s latch into its holder rather than leaving it at her feet.
It took one hand and five minutes.
She offered him another mark.
“It’s included,” he said.
“If it needed new holes, I’d charge.”
When he returned, Tan had finished Latch’s first foot pad: a riveted grip with a softer lining where it met the living wood.
The crate planted it on the workshop apron and pushed.
It slipped less than before, but the plate still lifted at one edge.
She reset the rivet.
Latch tried again.
While the plate cooled, Tan fitted a new ash handle to Bess’s survey hook.
Joss held the shaft in a clamp and tightened its retaining screw with his right hand.
The repaired tool went into their ordinary kit, outside every carrier seal.
The improvement was small enough to test and useful enough that Joss wanted it on all four feet.
Tan told him the other pads would have to wait until she knew this one didn’t rub.
They ate supper while the new seal dressing dried.
At the upper road gate, Joss presented the water contract and asked the toll for two travelers, one prepared empty frame, and one unbound living crate.
The clerk named eight marks.
Joss looked at the board.
The listed road charge was two.
“Six route restoration levy,” the clerk said.
“New receiving operators.”
“The bridge we restored?”
“All receiving operators.”
He pointed at Orren’s seal, then went back to another customer’s papers.
Joss understood the choice perfectly.
They could pay with almost everything left, abandoning the reserve meant to keep Wellmouth’s source working, or leave by a less reliable route.
The customer behind him carried a cage of hens and a bundle of empty tins.
She watched Joss count the two pouches, then put the cage down.
“Same levy for me?”
The clerk checked her permit.
“Renewed last month.
No.”
“Mine says bring supplies to Reed Dock.”
“Then your receiving permit needs review.”
She took the cage back before he could touch her paper.
The hens complained more loudly than either customer had.
Outside the gate, she asked Joss whether his route would take small freight too.
“When I can promise the road,” he said.
“Give Edda your name.
I won’t take money today for a run I haven’t surveyed.”
She nodded and went toward the bridge.
The hens’ complaints faded down the lane toward the bridge.
He didn’t argue until the queue grew behind him.
The clerk couldn’t change the seal.
Shouting would teach the waiting toll guards nothing they needed to know.
He took back his contract.
Tan had inspected the river ledge with him earlier.
Its old approach had survived their first journey, but every cart since had left tracks toward the predatory groove.
“We survey before putting this load on it,” she said.
“At dawn.”
“You sleep before dawn.”
He did.
His left palm had stopped bleeding, though the stitches still pulled when he closed his hand.
His ribs made him turn slowly under the cookhouse blanket.
Beside his bed, Latch practiced setting its repaired foot against the board Tan had given it.
Tap, grip, release.
Joss listened until he fell asleep.
In the morning, the independent frame would take a road nobody had promised was safe.