The ledge dropping from the water chute archway to the second tier of the Quarry Ward was carved directly into the living face of the limestone cliff.
It was a terrifying, unrailed shelf four feet wide, sloping downward at an eight-degree pitch across three hundred yards of sheer rock. On their right, the wall rose two hundred feet to the soot-stained foundation vaults of the surface city, weeping cold, bitter-salt stone water that ran down the stone in thin, glassy sheets. On their left lay four hundred feet of empty black air. It dropped straight to the boulder-strewn floor of the Great Sink.
Len walked with his right shoulder brushing the wet stone. His courier boots tested every foot of the ledge before committing his full weight.
His Road Sense buzzed continuously through the thick leather of his soles. He turned the deep-rock composition of the path into tactile signals. The solid, unbending bite of dense, blue crystal-clear limestone. The hollow, drum-like deep ring of an undercut overhang. The sudden, crumbly give of brittle gray shale that sloughed off under his heel and tumbled silently into the deep pit below. Every time the shale shifted, Surefoot engaged with an automatic, body contraction of his calf and hip, re-centering his balance over the inside edge of the rock without breaking the rhythm of his pace.
