Chancellor Morn walked to the heavy iron stone railing that overlooked the core pit, resting his thick, calloused palms on the curved handrail. Even through the heavy leather of his work gloves, the iron was hot enough that a faint wisp of scorched animal fat rose from his palms. He carried the sharp smell of burning animal fat into the gallery air.
“The war engine was destroyed eleven years ago in the Red Basin,” Morn said. His voice dropped into the matter-of-fact register of an engine-master explaining a boiler explosion to an apprentice. “A stray artillery shell cracked its fuel casing while it was crossing the stonework viaduct. The royal army pulled back forty miles beyond the western ridge within four days. By the time the first autumn frost came, there wasn’t a single hostile soldier within three weeks’ march of Rookvale.”
Ivara felt a cold, bitter knot tighten in her throat, harder and colder than the iron cuff around her wrist.
She had spent twelve years eating dried salt-turnips in the dark. She had lost her left arm to a double in the sixth winter. She had watched two hundred children grow up in the tram basements without knowing what a shadow looked like beneath an open sun. She had buried her survey crew in unlit churchyards where the grass had turned white and died from lack of daylight.
