The threshold of Magistrate Halden Pell’s private residence smelled of warm fat, scorched orange peel, and the bitter resin of cinnamon oil. To a man who had spent forty-eight hours breathing the bitter-salt chill of the Tram Ward sheds and the rotten-egg rot of the lower ditches, the shift was like stepping headfirst into a heated vat of animal fat.
Len Vey paused on the runner of heavy coir matting just inside the entry hall. He scraped a crusted rim of river muck and lime dust from the welt of his right boot. Behind him, Bram Ash stood motionless against the paneled doorframe, his brass court guard baton held vertically against his hip. Bram didn’t scrape his boots. His iron-shod soles remained planted on the parquet, leaving two damp, gray outlines that slowly cried water into the polished oak.
“Keep moving,” Bram muttered under his breath. The court guard’s voice had the dry rasp of an ungreased pulley. “He doesn’t like drafts from the carriage sweep.”
Len didn’t hurry. His left forearm remained tucked against his lower ribs, cradled in the stiff canvas sling he had pinned inside his courier tunic. Beneath three layers of boiled linen and a pad of pounded willow bark, seven horsehair stitches pulled savagely against the edges of two puncture wounds. The wound was not clean. The double’s teeth and fingernails had carried the stale grease of the intake channels. An angry red halo had begun to spread toward the elbow. Every beat of his…
