The double leather draft-curtain of Doma Reel’s communal kitchen parted with a heavy, scraping rustle. Len Vey stepped out onto the wet wooden walkway planks of Track One, his six-foot jointed sounding pole tucked beneath his right armpit like an iron-tipped crutch.
His left arm remained bound rigidly across his chest in two curved ash splints, the clean linen bandages gray with chimney soot along the edges. Every step on the slick timber sent a sharp, throbbing twinge through his broken radius. But his gait was steady, his weight distributed with the unconscious, rhythmic balance of a carrier who had walked ten thousand miles of mountain road.
Behind him walked Doma Reel. She wore her heavy gray wool kitchen apron, stained with turnip broth and cabbage salt water, her sleeves rolled up past her muscular, scarred forearms. In her right hand she carried an eight-inch steel butcher’s cleaver, resting flat against her thigh, its cutting edge sharpened until it gleamed like quicksilver in the charcoal light. Beside her came Heth Ash, her small shoulders wrapped in a thick wool shawl, her breath coming in shallow, dry catches, her gray eyes watchful and clear.
Fifty workers—wagon drivers, kiln tenders, boiler stokers, and river women—parted silently to let them through. No one spoke. The only sound was the drip of sulfur runoff from the raised iron tracks above and the ragged, chattering wheeze of Magistrate Halden Pell, who stood supported by Bram’s iron grip in the slush before the sandbag barrier.
