They didn’t flee with the fluid, measured endurance of mountain couriers.
They dragged themselves through the waist-deep black sludge of the Tramway drainage trench like crippled animals crawling through a collapsed mine shaft. The water was four feet deep in the central invert. A freezing, sluggish slurry of town waste, boiler blow-down, and chemical runoff that weighed fifty pounds against every forward step of their thighs. The sludge was thick with heavy-duty grease, skin-burning soda from the locomotive washing bays, and the sour drain water of three thousand tenement sculleries.
The trench had not been cleared of silt since the tenth year of the night. Underwater railway ties, discarded iron car-wheels, and rotting horse carcasses created an underwater maze of jagged snags that threatened to tear the boots from their feet at every stride. A layer of cold, yellow heavy-duty froth floated on the surface of the black water, trapping ammonia gases beneath an oily crust that stung their eyes and coated their lips in bitter, bitter-salt grease.
Tobin Callow had his thick soldier’s arm locked around Len Vey’s waist. He hauled the nineteen-year-old courier through the current with brute physical leverage. Len’s right boot barely skimmed the slime-covered brick bottom, his Surefoot milestone struggling to find purchase in the deep silt, his head lolling against Callow’s shoulder like that of a slaughtered calf. The boy’s clothes were heavy with sixty pounds of soaked wool and river mud, each forward motion requiring a coordinated heave of Callow’s broad torso.
