Len Vey buttoned his raw, unwhitened linen shirt, then pulled his canvas vest closed. It slid each bone button through its heavy eyelet with painful, deliberate care.
It was useless to try to hide the light.
Even through the linen, the canvas, and the heavy northern wool of his oilskin post coat, the blazing bright violet radiance of his seventh milestone bled outward into the gloomy cabin. It cast a faint, pulsating purple halo across the front of his coat, lighting up the copper-thread bracelet on his left wrist and casting the glow of his own young face against the soot-crusted glass of the watching window.
Len stepped to the glass.
The window was an arched sash of six small panes, four of them cracked by winter frost, coated in a thick, greasy film of coal tar and crushed bitter salt dust. Using the ball of his uninjured left thumb—ignoring the stinging pain where his infected forearm pulled against the canvas sling—he scraped away a circular patch of grime three inches across.
He leaned his forehead against the cold pine mullion. He peeked out into the permanent night of Rookvale.
From this raised perch on the signal overhead frame, four miles of the central country basin were visible beneath the low, engineered ceiling of the sky canopy.
