Nera struck the cart brake with her cane.
“Nobody lifts it,” she said.
“Get your hands away from the upper band.
You, lantern, bring that lower.”
The neighbors obeyed the voice before deciding whether they liked its owner.
Joss let go of the handles.
The relief in his wounded hand was so sharp he nearly laughed.
Nera examined the brass needle.
Eighty-nine.
She touched the damp corner of the cradle, sniffed the oil on her fingers, and looked up at him.
“Who sold you river dressing?”
“A man with shutters.”
“It buys time.
It doesn’t close a seal.”
“I paid for the time.”
That earned him a brief look.
“You got here.”
She unlocked the door and directed the neighbors into her anchor house.
The front room contained a bed, a cold stove, and enough iron bolted through the floor to arrest a ship.
The house was smaller than its work.
Joss guided the cart between two iron rails.
Nera braced her cane against a socket and lowered herself onto a stool.
Her bandaged knee had begun bleeding through.
“Sit,” Joss said.
“I just did.
Your powers of observation will comfort us all.”
He left her alone and helped the neighbors set wooden blocks behind his wheels.
Sella brought the lantern close.
On Nera’s wall hung a faded route chart.
The Blue Scar was a broad brown stain beyond Crownfall.
Somebody had drawn a red line through it and then burned a hole where the line ended.
Joss looked away before the old familiar wish could distract him.
Two years of looking west had never made the west answer.
Nera scraped Krail’s label off the cradle with a blunt knife.
“They took the span from the bridge’s receiver frame,” she said.
“No evacuation.
No secondary support.
They left the standing half to carry a crossing it could no longer hold.”
“Can we put it back?”
“With the right rail.”
“Then sign for it.
I’ll find your rail tomorrow.”
Nera gave him a flat stare.
She put two fingers beside the needle and turned a small recessed catch.
A second brass face emerged beneath the first: a line drawing of the western span, its supports marked in red.
“If I accept this now, carriage ends.
The contents settle on my recipient anchor.
Look at the missing foot.”
He followed her finger.
One support line broke halfway down.
“This house is not a bridge pier,” she said.
“The span would unfold where it can.
We would learn which wall falls first.”
Sella moved away from the cart.
“The number?” Joss asked.
“Burden.
The frame folds most of the structure.
What’s left is the strain its seals and supports must bear.
Sixty-two when sound.
More when the contents start leaking.”
“More meaning ninety?”
“Ninety means we stop discussing numbers and get people out.”
She slid a little wedge beneath a black rib.
The needle dropped to eighty-four.
The floor rail rang beneath Joss’s boot.
Nera gripped her cane.
Her mouth tightened.
“That’s the load going somewhere,” she said.
“A carrier doesn’t wish it away.”
He could see blood on her bandage, sweat at her temple, and the locked stiffness of her hand.
She had more knowledge than him and less strength to spend.
“You can’t keep that wedge there?”
“The support beneath this room is cracked.
I can hold it against wandering.
I can’t brace it indefinitely.”
One of the neighbors, a narrow man with flour on his sleeves, spoke from the doorway.
“Get it out of the district, then.
We still have the ferry.”
“One ferry,” Sella said.
“For work carts, medicine, food, and everyone who thinks they’re first.”
“Better than a bridge falling on us.”
Joss understood him.
He had eight marks left, a damaged cart belonging to the man who had just fired him, and a parcel that might turn his skeleton into a pier.
He asked Nera, “If I carry it upstream and drop it?”
“The missing span will settle where it lands.
The standing bridge will lose the last folded supports linking it to this frame.
Our east bank wall may go with it.”
“May?”
“I haven’t stood under it tonight.
Ask me after I have.”
She was angry enough to tell him what she didn’t know.
That made him trust her more than Krail.
Joss took the red-stamped shipping label out of his pocket.
“They sent it to a dead recipient with disposal instructions.”
Nera’s cane stopped tapping.
“I paid a clerk to kill my registration six years ago,” she said.
“After the authority took my route, they decided my remaining leg was unpaid equipment.
Dead people get fewer invoices.”
“Someone found you.”
“Or found the old address.
Same trouble tonight.”
She reached beneath her stool and pulled out a leather wallet.
Inside lay a thin strip of dull metal with one clear bead set into it.
“Restricted carrier charter,” she said.
“One load.
No authority route privileges.
A promise attached to work you actually mean to do.
I can issue it.
You don’t have to take it.”
“What’s the cost?”
“When the frame fails, you feel it before the straps do.
When you bind it, you become responsible for keeping it supported until a living recipient can accept it.
You won’t learn every old road in a night.”
Joss looked at the others.
“And wages?”
The flour-sleeved man opened his mouth, then closed it.
Sella folded her arms.
“We can feed you.”
“Food isn’t a wheel.”
“Then ask for a wheel tomorrow.”
The crate tapped a foot against its cradle.
The needle had reached eighty-seven again.
Joss knelt beside it.
“I’m carrying this span to Reed Bridge,” he said.
“For the people using the crossing.
I’ll keep it supported until Nera and the dock can put it back safely.”
Nera pressed the charter bead against the inside of his right wrist.
It was cold enough to hurt.
A narrow line appeared beneath his skin, following a vein toward his palm.
He jerked, but Nera held the strip steady.
“Choose the bounded frame.
Touch its straps.
Don’t grab everything because it’s nearby.”
Joss laid his right hand against the lower strap.
His left palm stayed above the blood-stained wrapping.
The crate’s lid rose a fraction.
He paused.
“I’m steadying the frame,” he told it.
“You’re free to get off when we have somewhere safe.”
One foot withdrew from the knot.
Another rested beside his hand.
He felt the load.
It wasn’t heaviness in his shoulders.
It was a pressure spread along the touched strap, a question the cart and floor were being asked together.
Every weak nail stood out.
Every intact block gave the pressure somewhere to rest.
He pulled the wandering edges into the shape the black ribs already defined.
The needle fell.
Eighty.
Seventy-one.
Sixty-eight.
The line on his wrist darkened.
Small marks formed around it.
GRADE 1.
CARRIER.
CAPACITY 80.
BOUND 1.
Joss breathed out.
The frame stayed sixty-eight.
His knees shook.
The cart still sagged on its damaged wheel.
His cut still hurt.
“There,” Nera said.
He tried to lift a handle.
Pain flared up his wrist, and the pressure shifted dangerously toward the wheel.
Nera knocked his hand away with her cane.
“Steady isn’t light.”
Joss sat on the floor, breathing through the sting.
Through the open door, someone had begun telling the lane that the courier had saved the bridge.
He pointed at the cradle’s red support mark.
“Tell them we’re halfway through saving it.”
Nera let go of the charter strip.
“Less than halfway.
The rail we need is in Krail’s bonded depot.”