Len suspended the bell by its braided leather thong. He lifted it two inches above the scarred pine of the butcher’s table. In the quiet of the Tramway kitchen storeroom, thirty feet below the rattling iron heavy beams of the rail yard, the only movement was the slow, trembling rise and fall of his own ribs.
The room smelled of cold fat, damp sawdust. The sharp, vinegar-laced wash Doma used to keep mold from overtaking the dough troughs. High above, through three feet of arched brickwork, the distant shunt of a coal wagon sent a tiny shudder through the timber ceiling, dislodging a pinch of white lime dust that drifted down through the lamplight like dead skin.
His right hand was steady, but his knuckles were gray with dried sheep fat and quartz dust sand. He held his breath, leaning down until his ear was three inches from the polished bronze lip. With the bare knuckle of his right index finger, he gave the metal a sharp, deliberate tap just below the termination of the hairline crack.
Clang-tinnnng.
The sound was not the clean, rounded bell-note of a church tower or a town watchman’s chime. It was split. The first strike was a hard, high-pitched metal crack that bit into the ears like a cold chisel hitting granite. But before the deep ring could spread into a clean ring, the fractured edges of the bronze collided. A harsh, buzzing rattle tore through the tone. A high-hum chatter caused by the…
