By the time Mehrab called for the next patient, Koldin had reached the road leading toward the freight yard.
The road ran straight for a while and then bent around a low rise where the soil had been cut away to make room for traffic. There were fewer shops here. Timber fronts gave way to corrugated sheds, fuel depots, machine yards, and vacant lots in which grass grew around pieces of abandoned equipment. The mud bore deeper tracks. Heavy vehicles had passed through while the earth was wet and left their weight impressed there after the water withdrew.
Near the junction stood a bus shelter constructed from pressed and treated corkwood and sheets of clouded glass. Its roof leaned toward the road and the painted timetable inside had faded until every destination appeared equally hypothetical.
A yinglet waited within it.
He had gray fur, stark orange eyes, and the compact build of someone who spent his life lifting objects that belonged to other people. A broad hat shaded his face. Beneath it he wore grease-darkened work clothes with the sleeves cut away and the front hanging partly open. One foot rested on the bench while the other stood in a shallow puddle without apparent concern.
In one hand he held a bottle of syrupbloom soda. In the other, a tabak cigarette.
He drank from the bottle, smoked, then drank again as if the two substances were engaged in some private correction of one another. The cigarette had burned down nearly to his claws.
Koldin approached along the edge of the road. The worker turned his eyes toward him but did not otherwise move. The orange irises remained fixed upon the uniform, the pistol, the enormous golok. Then he drew deeply on the cigarette and exhaled through the side of his mouth.
“Morning,” Koldin said.
The worker lifted the bottle by a fraction.
Koldin continued.
Behind him the bus shelter remained occupied by the gray yinglet and the mingled fumes of sugar and tabak. No bus was visible in either direction. Perhaps one would come. Perhaps the shelter had ceased being connected to transportation years before and existed now only as a place where a person could stand beneath a roof while waiting for something unnamed.
The freight yard announced itself first through noise.
Metal struck metal somewhere beyond the perimeter wall. Engines idled and accelerated. Chains tightened with a long iron complaint. A whistle sounded twice, followed by shouted numbers that lost their meaning before reaching the road.
The entrance stood open between two masonry posts bearing emblem of some logistical company. A gatehouse occupied one side. Inside it a clerk sat behind a window with an open ledger and a cup placed carefully beyond the reach of his elbow.
Koldin stepped toward the entrance and stopped. A heavy motorized carriage was coming out.
The vehicle emerged slowly beneath a load of timber crates stacked higher than its cab. Its broad tires sank into the mud and climbed out again, shedding thick sections of earth. The engine produced a laboring mechanical rumble. A strip of red cloth had been tied to the rear of the load, though nothing about the carriage suggested that a person approaching from behind would survive long enough to benefit from the warning.
Koldin moved aside.
The driver leaned over the wheel, face shining with sweat. Beside him sat another man holding several documents against his chest. Neither acknowledged Koldin. The carriage passed close enough that he felt the heat from its engine and smelled hot oil, damp wood, and the sour mineral odor of whatever had been transported in the same vehicle before the crates.
The rear wheels dropped into a rut. The entire load shifted.
Koldin watched the uppermost crate move several inches to one side and remain there.
The man with the documents looked back through the rear window.
Koldin pointed upward.
The man looked at the crate, then at Koldin, and gave the small helpless shrug of somebody whose responsibility ended at observation. The carriage continued toward town.
Koldin waited until the road cleared and entered the yard.
The clerk in the gatehouse glanced at him.
“Patrol?”
“Yes.”
“West lane’s blocked.”
“Wizh what?”
“Freight.”
Koldin looked past him into the yard.
“Zhat narrows it.”
The clerk moved one shoulder.
“Crane lost a cable.”
“Anyone hurt?”
“No.”
“Yet?”
The clerk looked toward the rows of containers.
“Not as far as they’ve told me.”
Koldin signed the patrol ledger. The pen left a pale line at first. He pressed harder and wrote his name beneath the previous entry, which had been made the day before by somebody whose handwriting was a incomprehensible scribble.
He returned the pen. The clerk looked at the golok.
“You planning to clear the west lane yourself?”
“No.”
“Good.”
Koldin passed through.
The freight yard was less a place than a system of temporary corridors. Crates stood in long ranks beneath tarpaulins. Steel containers had been stacked two and three high, their painted surfaces blistered by weather and marked with shipping signs from ports across Olissingen and the Heart. Some bore old House Ivenmoth seals. Others carried the insignia of minor Tradehouses, commercial guilds, military bureaus, mining concerns, and other firms.
The lanes between them changed from week to week.
People who did not work there became lost. People who did work there became lost more efficiently.
Koldin knew the common routes and most of the uncommon ones. He began with the eastern perimeter, moving between a row of resin barrels and a stack of narrow wooden cases stamped with warnings in three languages. He checked the wire fence where rainwater had undermined one post. The post leaned inward but remained standing. A length of fresh cord showed that somebody had already decided this constituted repair.