Chapter 327: After the Contact

Ren washed his forearm before taking the papers out again.

He crouched at the shelf’s edge and lowered his arm into the channel. Blood had dried in the creases of his wrist. He worked it loose with his thumb, turning his hand beneath the water until the last of it came away.

He left his arm there a little longer, then dried it on his coat and went up to the post.

— • —

He copied the seized sheet onto an office form: the two consignment references, the sealed status, the station, the parties’ marks and the instructions for reaching Old Cistern. Beneath it he recorded where they had been when the escort found them and how the fight had begun.

The escort attacked during our withdrawal and was killed. A second attacker withdrew wounded. The wagon leader fled along the second route.

Vesper checked the sequence against her notebook. Ren added the location of the body and where he had obtained the original sheet, then entered Mei’s case reference so the transport record could reach the same investigation.

The copy went into the report box. He kept the original folded along its existing crease inside his coat.

There was no reply through the landing contact yet.

— • —

Eira had Vesper sitting on the shelf with her coat slipped off one shoulder.

She pressed around the joint, then asked Vesper to raise her arm and turn it. Vesper followed the movements without stopping or favoring the shoulder.

"Any pain there?"

"No."

Eira let her lower it and moved on to Ren. He showed her where the palm had landed. She checked the spot, asked him to breathe deeply, then had him turn and lift both arms. Nothing pulled or hurt.

"Tell me if that changes," she said, closing his coat.

Mistwhisker rested beside the kit. Eira loosened the dressing and examined the cut across its paw. The edges were holding together, but grit had worked into the outer cloth during the journey. She replaced it, checked the fit above the joint and settled the cat beside her while she packed away the used dressing.

Ren went down to Ward with Vesper. The cradle had stayed level through the turns, and its straps were still firm. They checked the cargo pack next. One loose strap end had slipped from its keeper; Vesper threaded it back through and tucked it flat against the pack.

Ren checked that he still carried Keep’s spore, then looked along the channel toward the road’s first bend.

— • —

Tarin stood on the bank beside its Lawfire, watching the approach.

"Keep that position while we rest," Ren told it. "Riptide checks the channel to the first bend and back. Pell carries word between you and the shelf. We’ll take turns on watch."

"The road from here," Tarin said.

"Yes. If anyone comes along it, call us before they reach the post."

He added what they had recovered to the account he had already given at the side channel. Tarin listened, then turned back toward the road as Riptide moved away from the shelf.

Ren called Vesper and Eira over before setting out the next travel order.

"I take the front on land. Eira stays between us. Vesper, watch the rear and the open flank. Ward keeps alongside wherever there’s enough depth."

"And when we leave the channel?" Vesper asked.

"We check the way back before we split. Same agreed limit for every scout. We won’t use that ridge again without looking at the approaches first."

Eira glanced at the dark gate frame across the shelf.

"We could ask for a crossing and rest at home."

"We can if we need it," Ren said. "For now, rest here in turns. I want to work out where that sheet sends them before we go back out."

The gate would still return them to this landing. Whether they slept here or at home, someone from the station had seen their approach and escaped with that knowledge.

— • —

Ren spread a dry cloth on the upper shelf and laid out the records, keeping the unused papers covered with its folded edge.

The inspection copy and collection entries went together. He put the supplement for the worked fragment beside them. It recorded where the stone had come from and the survey mark on its face; it did not identify whoever had left it beneath the growth.

The transport papers lay beside the slate. He set the seized original apart from his earlier copy and wrote their sources on a separate cover sheet: one copied at the junction, one taken after the fight. Vesper opened her notebook to the yard entry.

They checked the references against the office attachments. The earlier consignment matched the depot-register extract. The new pair matched the carrier’s booking. Both transfer sheets named the same onward station, but only the seized original supplied its name and approach instructions.

Ren entered the links in his notes under case 2/71, the investigation into Mei’s abduction. He left the collection records beside their inspection copy and drew the habitat record out from beneath the map.

— • —

The supplier’s record gave the last reliable sighting of a nesting partner and the route used to reach it. Ren had followed the site’s bearing from the cove. Now he read through the approach notes with the cargo instructions beside them.

The old survey designations marked successive points along the route. At the third, he stopped.

12-W. Old works. Stone lip above the sunken road. Approach from the road’s end.

He moved the seized sheet closer. Its next-station field carried that designation beside the name Old Cistern.

Ren followed the receiving instructions with his finger: approach by the sunken road, unload at the stone lip. He returned to the habitat entry and checked the lines above and below the old works. It was an approach point before the final site.

"Read these," he said to Vesper.

She read the habitat entry, then the station instructions. Her finger came to rest beside the matching designation.

"That’s their unloading point."

"And the old works on our route."

Ren opened the map beneath her notebook. Her sketch showed only the visible stretch of the second route, running into the low ground toward the site’s bearing. They had never seen its end. He could not place the cistern precisely from that sketch, but the designation and the two landmarks identified what they would be looking for when they reached it.

He marked the connection on his own route notes. The cargo instructions would take the carriers to the same stone lip that the supplier’s travelers had passed on their way to the nesting ground.

"The sighting was farther on," he said, tracing the remaining entries. "This doesn’t put them at the nest."

"Is there another approach?"

"None in this record. We’ll have to look."

The seized sheet’s warning about the upper bank remained unexplained. Ren copied it beneath the old designation. The habitat notes said nothing about that bank, and he left space beside the warning for what they might find.

He put the original away under its cover sheet and kept the habitat record open. They had directions now, but those directions brought the party to a place used by the same operation whose escort he had killed.

The approach in the habitat record passed the stone lip where their cargo was due to be unloaded.