The central tram interchange smelled of scorched transformer oil, rotten-egg coal-melted rock waste, and stale water that had pooled in the check pits twelve years ago and never found a drain. Above the four-track junction, the soaring iron roof beams of the vaulted ceiling arched into the gloom, their ribbed glass panes blacked out by baked layers of locomotive soot until not even the faint, greenish refraction of the sky shield could filter through.
Bram Ash kept his lantern hooded to a slit no wider than a land-mapper’s fingernail. The wick burned with a low, olive-colored flame. Refined rapeseed oil treated with dissolved copper sulfate. It cast an austere, greenish-yellow slice of light across the rusted rails and splintered hemlock ties.
Behind him, Len Vey and Ivara Quill moved with disciplined, timed together strides. Every three paces, a heavy drop of steam cooled water fell from an overhead load-bearing beam with a sharp, ringing ping against the curved iron roof of an abandoned passenger coach. Len and Ivara matched the fall of their heavy boots to that exact clockwork beat, drowning the scrape of their soles in the cave’s native noise.
Bram paused at the corner of the freight-handling platform, his hand resting on the flanged wheel of an overturned luggage cart. His right shoulder burned beneath its fresh linen dressings—a dull, tearing ache where a court guard’s lead pellet had clipped the collarbone three shifts ago—but his eyes remained clear and sharp, scanning the platform aisles.
