They didn’t waste five seconds congratulating themselves on the scald. In Rookvale, a repelled hunter was not a defeated hunter. It was a clerk that had simply discovered a defective valve and was now looking for an open chimney pipe.
Ivara Quill was already moving toward the back iron ladder that climbed into the upper framework of the tramway overhead frame. Her single hand moved up the cold rungs with rhythmic, clockwork speed, her empty gray sleeve pinned tight against her wool coat with an iron needle-point arrow to keep it from snagging on the bolt heads. She climbed with an eerie, practiced economy of motion, hooking her left elbow over the cross-struts to rest her good wrist, her boots finding the center of each tread without a glance downward.
“Len,” she called down, her voice thin and dry against the whistling draft from the roof. “Bring the long glass. We need the compass bearing before the creature leaves the outer edge. If it reaches the high stonework, it blinds our exits.”
Len strapped his sounding pole diagonally across his back with the modified breakaway loop, checked that his braced left forearm was secured inside its linen sling. Then he followed her up the iron rungs. His blistered right palm burned like fire against the frozen iron, each rung sending an electric twinge of agony into his shoulder. But Surefoot kept his boots planted squarely in the center of the treads. He didn’t look down at the kitchen floor, where…
