The descent from the water tower to the lower hospital road was a steep, gravel-strewn switchback cut directly into the weathered dark rock face of the ridge. Water from the upper drainage under-road drains trickled across the path, freezing into greasy, see-through sheets of black ice that clung to the crevices between the stones.
Bram Ash didn’t look for safe footing. The former court guard scrambled down the slope with reckless, desperate driving force. His heavy boots skidded through the shale, his free hand clawing at the frozen blackberry briars along the embankment to keep from pitching headlong down the terrace. All his skilled caution—the measured, silent patrol discipline he had kept for nine years—had vanished the instant the green flame over the medicine room was snuffed out.
“Steady, Bram,” Len hissed, keeping three paces behind him.
Len’s Road Sense shook through the soles of his boots, warning him of load-bearing instability in the gravel fill. Every dynamic shock sent a vicious, thudding jolt of pain through his braced left forearm, the cedar laths pressing hard against the inflamed tissue where the hunter’s puncture wounds were stitched with horsehair. But his balance held. Surefoot—one of the five bodily improvements he had lawfully claimed in the outside daylight before crossing into Rookvale—corrected his balance point with tiny muscle shifts each time his heel slipped on the ice.
