In Tram Ward, the unending night smelled of sulfur, damp coal slack, and the cold, fatty grease of turnip broth. A thick, yellow mist drifted through the iron frame stands of the raised freight lines. He carried with it the persistent, rhythmic thump of the lower high-pressure pumps three streets away. The air had the bitter, metal taste that came with falling air pressure in a stone basin where every chimney vented inward beneath a ceiling of iron-hard cloud.
Bram Ash stood behind the double-row sandbag breastwork thrown across Track One, his uninjured left hand resting on the chilled iron breech of a heavy line-throwing swivel gun. The weapon was an improvised piece of ordnance. An obsolete marine casting salvaged from the river docks three nights earlier, clamped to an old hand-truck axle with U-bolts and loaded with four pounds of scrap boiler rivets, clipped iron wire, and chopped chain links. Beside him, two dock workers in grease-stained canvas jackets held heavy oak pick-handles, their faces lit by the dull, smoky glare of a charcoal fire bowl set into an iron wheelbarrow.
Bram’s right shoulder burned with a rhythmic, sickening heat. The bullet wound he had taken during the state oil depot raid had been stitched with coarse horsehair and washed with salt water. But every breath pulled against the inflamed muscle around his collarbone. He ignored the fever. He had spent nine years wearing the slate-blue coat of a town court guard, enforcing curfew decrees that kept honest families…
