Chapter 23: A Real Docket

The surge sheet hung from one nail on the pit-gate board, and the nail was loose. Mira got to it at the first bell on the thirty-fourth, with Tessa a pace behind, and stood with her palm against the board's frame until the pressure on the crown of her head eased to something she could walk with. The sheet was the Company's usual half page: the Cut's pulse on the top line, the surge below it in a smaller hand. She read the lower line twice and copied it on a ration slip with the stub. S. Tenth bell. A Company boy came down the gatehouse steps with a ladle in his fist, and she had the slip in her shawl before he reached the nail. At the second bell, the shift bell, he took the sheet down, as he took it down every morning. By month's end it would…