The central vaulted chamber of Overflow Three smelled of cedar smoke, crushed bitter pine-resin leaves, and boiling lime.
Four massive iron cooking pots, salvaged from the abandoned pump-works by the nomad wagon drivers, sat perched atop blazing charcoal fire bowls along the central drainage gutter. Dense clouds of fragrant white steam billowed from their rims, captured and directed by vast overhead curtains of wet canvas that the refugees had rigged between the brick retention pillars.
Arthur Vance walked down the center aisle of the gallery. His boots splashed softly through the inch-deep gutter water.
Beside each cooking pot stood two nomad elders, stirring the thick, bubbling gray-white slurry with peeled hardwood oars. With every stroke, the mixture released a bitter-salt fine mist rich in spark-charged calcium and volatile bitter pine-resin oils. It drifted through the cave like a warm, cleansing mountain fog.
In the sheltered alcoves along the brick walls, families sat wrapped in coarse wool blankets, their heads tilted back. They inhaled the aromatic vapor in slow, rhythmic breaths.
Arthur knelt beside a low cot near the second pillar.
Eight-year-old Elspeth sat cross-legged on a pile of clean dry reeds, a tin mug of warm marsh-willow tea cradled in her hands. The deep, terrifying rattle that had choked her chest thirty hours earlier was gone. Her breathing was even, clear, and quiet. Her pale cheeks had regained a faint rose-colored warmth under the lantern light.
