Len watched until the boy’s blue woolen coat was a tiny speck on the distant pine ridge. Only when Tav disappeared over the crest, swallowed by the green canopy of the mountain forest, did Len step back from the steel threshold. That let the heavy iron turnstile swing shut with a dry, clockwork clang that echoed through the water chute.
He turned back toward the black province.
Rookvale lay before him like an open tomb carved into the mountain floor. The thoroughfare dropped into a sea of pitch-black slate roofs, chimney pots belching sulfur smoke, and flickering green copper beacons that marked the guard post checkpoints. The air was cold, tasting of coal dust, stale canal water. The sour dampness that had soaked into the stonework over twelve years of darkness. In the pass behind them, the summer sun had warmed the gravel. Here, ten paces into the water chute, the cold was immediate and wet, seeping through his trousers like melting snow.
Beside him, Bram Ash stood with his hands on his sword belt, eyes fixed on the closed turnstile. The big court guard looked older in the green lantern light, the lines around his mouth carved deep by years of complicity. He reached inside his heavy town greatcoat, drew out his brass duty stamp. Then he stared at the engraved numerals. For fifteen years, that stamp had authorized detentions and ration seizures. Today, he had used it to forge a clearance for a runaway apprentice.
