Flour on Callow’s Warning

Thirty-two minutes the glass at Hollin Scar stayed dark, the third long dark in a short run. Then the Antswarm’s runner came down the lane shouting their catch and the price, three drops and a fifth a span, and every Sec stoker sat back down on the coal.

Hale Corrigan didn’t. He had the scrap out of his coat again, the one Ivo Starling’s grey band had carried over from Pelling Mill. It was still white at the creases with mill flour. He had read it four times alone. Now he climbed onto the tally bench and read it once aloud, slowly, so nobody could say later they’d misheard.

“Callow,” said Wilm Garside. “The Glare’s man.”

“The Glare’s man who says he isn’t.” Corrigan folded it. “A warm lamp’s coming here, with somebody’s pen on the order. When it comes I’ll read every line of the print out on this floor, small or not. Nobody signs for Sec alone. Not me either.”

Dury Mallin raised a black hand. “My girl wants to know if we’ll take it.”

“Then she can come and hear it read,” Corrigan said. “I won’t promise her an answer I haven’t earned.”

Dury thought that over and nodded. He’d take that home instead of a yes. Wilm wrote it into the tally: warning received, flour-marked, read aloud before witnesses. Corrigan pinned the scrap to the shift-board where the whole floor could see it, flour and all.