Ivara Quill walked to the edge of the watching railing. Her sounding rule was held in her right hand. Her eyes were locked on the flooded drainage water chute below. Len Vey stepped up beside her, his brass sounding pole braced against his hip, his fractured left arm throbbing within its split-ash casing as the cold river draft chilled his skin.
Down on the lower stone ledge. There, the black floodwater swirled around the stonework footings, the double was attempting to climb. It had dragged its body from the rushing current and reached the third iron rung of the upkeep ladder leading to the street level. But its limbs were failing to obey its commands.
The creature’s left hand—the hand that had swung the heavy crowbar with such terrifying, two-armed leverage against the upkeep door—was crumbling before their eyes. The smooth, artificial skin of the palm had turned the color of dry wood ashes, peeling away in brittle, papery scales that dissolved the instant they touched the water. Beneath the skin, there was no red blood, no white bone, and no torn tendon. There was only a dense, compacted weave of dark, slate-gray matter that looked like crushed coal dust held together by static electricity.
