Len crawled on his stomach through the wet pine shavings of the terrace floor, coming to rest behind the third stone baluster of the northern low roof wall. The granite coping was cold against his cheek, coated in a greasy film of sulfur soot and bitter salt dust that tasted of vinegar.
From this vantage point, thirty feet above the lower delivery court, the entirety of Chancellor Morn’s guard post operations was laid bare.
His strapped left arm throbbed inside Doma’s linen chest swathe, the bruised collar bone sending a dull ache into his jaw with every beat of his heart. He rested the tip of his ash sounding pole against the inside of the stone railing. That kept the iron shoe from clicking on the wet stone. Through the two-inch gap between the carved stone spindles, he watched the cold drafts from the lower basin swirl through the delivery court. He carried the stench of wet horse hair, sulfur grease, and stale coal smoke.
The delivery court was a box-shaped enclosure of dressed granite cut stone blocks, fifty paces long and thirty wide, wedged between the sheer rock face of the ridge and the rear wall of the domestic quarters. It was designed as an office sally port. The single point where heavy freight wagons could enter the Star tower grounds without passing through the public gates. Four high-pressure copper lamps, mounted on massive timber brackets ten feet up the walls, flooded the wet cobblestones with harsh, glare-free green…
