Chapter 223: What Comes Across the Plain (1)
Nothing came on the first day.
Nothing came on the second.
Two hundred and six people worked a construction site knowing that somebody had voted to kill them.
Petta stopped sleeping. She laid block all day and sat up all night with her back to a barrel, watching the north.
A rigger from the second shift walked up to Halvers on the morning of the second day and could not get the words out.
Halvers put a hand on his shoulder, said "It is all right, lad," and had him on the noon transport with full pay and nothing on his record.
Nobody said a word about it. Two or three men looked at their boots.
"That is what they are counting on," Odran said quietly, watching the transport go. "They do not even have to come. They just have to not come, for long enough."
Draven checked the map twice a day.
He did it standing at the northern edge of the site with his eyes half closed.
