Halden Pell sat on a three-legged ash stool in the corner of Doma Reel’s grain storage nook. She pulled the damp collar of his beaver-skin cloak tight around his throat. The room smelled of cold stone, very thirsty barley. The sour mash of fermented turnip peelings. Above his head, suspended from a heavy iron floor beam by an ungreased wire, a single copper-flame lantern swung with every shudder of the raised freight line two levels above.
The flame was uneven. The wick was crusted with animal fat melted rock waste. Every time the draft from the rail trench pushed through the brick foundation, the greenish flare leaped sideways. It cast two long, shivering silhouettes across the whitewashed stonework behind him.
Pell kept his eyes locked on those two shadows. His hands, clenched inside the fleece lining of his pockets, were slick with cold sweat. For four years, his nightmares had featured that exact outline. The narrow, sloping shoulders of the traveling coat he had worn. Just then, he took the country bench in the eighth winter of the siege. The stiff, high beaver hat with the silver buckle. The sharp, hungry arch of his nose that his grandfather had passed down along with the registry deeds.
