The steam whistle atop Foundry Tower Seven blew three short blasts, cutting through the rotten-egg morning mist that rolled off the Ironfang canal basin. It wasn’t the standard assembly call for dawn conditioning. The steady beat belonged to an emergency trial summons.
Arthur Vance stopped on the gravel path outside the lower kennels. Beneath his worn canvas duster, the morning damp clung to his collar, smelling of spent coal slurry, river rot, and cold motor grease. He didn’t turn back toward the barracks.
At his left heel, Grimm paused in lockstep. The hound had grown in the weeks following the Crucible. His shoulder now reached Arthur’s lower ribs, his frame packed with dense, corded muscle wrapped in an iron-black coat. Beneath that fur, the osteo-skin plates along his spine and flanks felt like cold graphite under the palm. The dog’s left ear, torn and jagged from his slum days in the drainage pipes, swiveled toward the sound of the steam horn. Grimm made no sound. He merely lowered his heavy snout. He pressed the warm, calloused side of his jaw against the leather of Arthur’s boot cuff, checking for his handler’s pulse through the hide.
On Arthur’s right shoulder, Pip shifted his weight. The little raptor—once a starved sparrow barely able to flap its charred wings—clung to the heavy canvas shoulder plate with three curved talons that bit clean into the leather. His main feathers gleamed with the dark luster of forged gold leaf. It shook with a high-hum heat…
