River Ward was the drainage sump of Rookvale.
Geographically, it occupied the total lowest height in the province, a flat, waterlogged basin of river silt and river-bed gravel sitting at sea level. It was surrounded on three sides by the steep, terrace-cut cliffs of the middle plateau. Historically, it had been a district of barge docks, timber sawmills, and grain warehouses. Now, beneath the twelve-year night, it had become the cesspool where every heavy-duty discharge in the valley collected before being forced through the outer edge weirs.
Every gallon of boiling wastewater discharged from the Star tower cooling jackets, every barrel of bitter-salt water dumped from the Salt kilns. Every cubic foot of chemical slurry washed from the Tram sheds eventually drained down through the brick channels into the Black River. The water didn’t flow with a natural, seasonal current. It was a thick, oily sludge that moved in sluggish, irregular surges. He rose and fell against the slime-crusted stone retaining walls according to the self-running pumping cycles of the upper terraces.
The humidity here was total, coating Len’s face and clothes in a greasy, rotten-egg slime that tasted of wet lime and rusted iron. The fog hung in dense, yellow-gray curtains. It drifted across the mudbanks in slow, swirling eddies that scattered the faint light of the distant lanterns into a murky, indistinct blur.
