The freezing sleet had begun to mix with fine gray ash from the lower kiln chimney pipes, drumming against the zinc-coated corrugated steel roof of the Gate Ward boundary canopy with a steady, ear-splitting roar like rolling musketry. Beneath the overhang, the draft from the southern gorge sucked the heat from the stone roadway. That turned the puddles of yellow water into brittle plates of black ice that shattered under the heels of passing sentries.
Bram Ash walked with his chin tucked deep into the sheepskin collar of his old court guard’s coat. His wounded right shoulder was strapped across his chest in broad bands of tarred sailcloth that reeked of turpentine and dried blood. But his uninjured left arm remained clamped firmly across thirteen-year-old Tavi Rusk’s shoulders.
He kept the boy pressed close to his left flank. He used the heavy wool flap of his cloak to shield the front of Tavi’s coat from the four gray-coated Survey guards who stood huddled around an iron fire bowl twenty paces away. Beneath the coarse flannel, Bram could feel the unnatural, rhythmic warmth of the boy’s chest. A heavy, metal pulse that seemed to beat against his own ribs like a clockwork gear-catch.
