The heat inside the morning parlor was not the clean, scouring warmth of a pine hearth. It was an artificial humidity, dense with the oily residue of boiled away kerosene and the cloying musk of cinnamon animal fat. It coated the inside of Len’s nostrils with a thin, greasy film that tasted of copper salts.
In a recessed nook beside the fourth fire bowl stood a potted citrus tree. It was four feet tall, planted in a glazed clay pot tub painted with cobalt birds. Its leaves were thick and glossy. Even so, a check revealed a fine dusting of gray soot clinging to their upper surfaces. Three small, stunted lemons hung from the lower branches. Their skins were pale yellow and hardened into leathery rinds under the steady, packed beam of a hooded copper reflector mounted to the wall.
Outside the iron gates of High District, three thousand people lived on boiled turnip skins and measured lamp grease by the thickness of an iron nail. Here, an administrator burned three gallons of refined lighting up oil every twenty-four hours to keep three bitter lemons from withering in the dark.
Len felt sweat gathering along his hairline, trickling down through his eyebrows to sting his eyes. He didn’t raise his hand to wipe it away. His left forearm throbbed with a rhythmic, sickening rhythm that matched the pulse in his temples. Beneath his woolen vest, his Road Sense hummed through the thick leather of his boots, reading the room through…
