The sound of zinc-coated iron tearing under bare human fingers was unlike any clockwork failure Len had ever heard on the post road. It wasn’t the clean, explosive snap of a timber beam shearing under dynamic shock, nor was it the hollow, grinding groan of cast-iron cracking in the winter frost. It was a slow, wet, deliberate ripping, like a butcher sliding a dull knife through heavy cowhide.
Skrrr-chhk.
Thirty feet above the worktable. There, the central chimney rose through the corrugated roof, a three-sided flap of eight-gauge sheet iron curled upward into the black air. The gap was barely four inches wide. But the freezing bitter salt wind from the Salt Ward found it instantly, howling through the tear with a shrill, pipe-like shriek that blew soot from the rafters. Then it sent a shower of black cinders fluttering into the green light of the lanterns.
Len stood beneath the flanged iron support post, his neck craned upward, his good right hand clamped around the head of his sounding pole. His blistered knuckles throbbed with every heartbeat, but he didn’t lower his gaze. Through the torn triangle of iron, three fingers protruded into the room.
They were human fingers. They were long, lean, and pale, scarred across the first knuckle of the index finger by an old slip from a skinning knife. The exact same scar Len had carried since he was fourteen winters old. But where Len’s fingers were trembling with fatigue and covered in blistered skin from…
