Night fell over Rust-Water Basin not with the gentle cooling of a normal twilight, but with a heavy, choking descent of rotten-egg fog that smothered the red embers of the nomad hearths.
The floating settlement was quiet. For the first time in six weeks, the rhythmic coughing that had haunted every shack was replaced by the deep, steady breathing of recovering lungs. Lanterns fashioned from rusted punched holes in tin cans hung from the roof edges of the stilt-houses, casting flickering amber circles across the black, stale water.
On the sheltered aft deck of the second hauler, beneath a heavy waterproof tarp rigged against the acid drizzle, Arthur Vance sat on a three-legged stool with a zinc basin of warm water and his beast-doctor grooming kit spread across a wooden plank.
Beside his knee, Grimm lay sprawled on his side, his four legs stretched out across the ribbed steel floorboards.
Arthur held Grimm’s left rear paw in his left hand, his fingers palpating the ankle hinge joint where the old hardened fracture had been surgically reset during their first desperate night in the academy boiler vaults. The bone stone thickness had quadrupled since then, the spongy-bone lattice converted into an iron-hard honeycomb of jet-black bone. But scar tissue along the deep flexor tendon needed regular mobilization after heavy combat.
