The mist rising from the drainage canal smelled of river sulfur, coal silt, and cold engine grease.
Ivara Quill walked along the granite quay of River Ward with her sound right hand tucked deep inside the pocket of her heavy wool work-coat, her fingers curled around the brass housing of her pressure gauge. Her left sleeve was pinned flat against her ribs, the empty wool pinned neatly to the side seam with three steel diaper pins. The empty cuff brushed her waist-coat with every stride. A light, familiar swinging weight she had ceased to think about five years ago, until Len Vey’s fractured arm had made every missing limb in Rookvale a tactical variable in their building counts.
The footbridge rose ahead through the gloom, its massive granite piers swallowed by the pale green haze of the town copper lamps mounted to the low roof walls. Beneath the central arch, the high-pressure high-pressure channel pulsed with a measured, steady beat. A hollow clunk-shudder every forty-two seconds as the steam cooler jackets from the Star tower three miles to the north discharged wastewater into the lower silt traps.
The houses lining the bridge embankment were dark. Their windows were covered with double-layered oiled sailcloth, drawn tight to shut out both the sulfur-laden river damp and the sight of their own reflections in the black, sluggish current below. In River Ward, nobody looked into the canal after curfew. The water was too still, and things that had lost their names had a…
