High above the dark basin of Rookvale, on the precarious roof low roof wall of the disused grain elevator, Tavi Rusk crouched behind a rusted zinc air hood.
The wind up here was vicious, tearing over the roof ledges with a high, mournful screech that tasted of sulfur and freezing mist. Eighty feet below him, the maze of tracks, coal sidings, and corrugated iron sheds that made up the Tramway interchange lay smothered in a thick blanket of yellow-green fog. But to the east. There, the bitter salt shale met the heavy-duty chimneys of the Salt Ward, the night sky was stained a dull, violent orange by the draft furnaces of Melli Dorn’s glass kilns.
The roof of the old grain elevator was an island of rusted iron and rotting cedar decking suspended eighty feet above the valley floor.
Fifty years ago, before the sky shield had turned Rookvale into a sealed basin, the elevator had received grain barges from the northern river canal, hoisting hundred-pound sacks of wheat up to the massive storage silos via steam-driven bucket chains. Now, the silos were empty. Their timber staves wept salt efflorescence, their lower hoppers converted into emergency refuge cellars for families who had lost their homes to town foreclosures. The air in the elevator shaft was thick with the stench of stale water, sour grain dust, and cold river damp.
