The shift from the boiling hot, ninety-degree vapor of Greenhouse Four to the open terrace was like stepping off a cliff into an icy lake.
The wind blowing off the high northern ridges of Rookvale tasted of raw shale, crushed limestone powder. The bitter, metal frost of an engineered winter that had lasted twelve years. Sulfur fog hung low over the switchback road, swirling in greasy, yellow-gray eddies around the iron-rimmed wheels of twelve heavy freight wagons. The wagons were lined up single-file along the dry-laid granite retaining wall, their seasoned timber sideboards creaking under the gusts.
Harnessed to the tongue of each wagon were four sturdy mountain mules. The animals stood with their heads lowered, their shaggy coats glistening with freezing drizzle. Over their eyes were fitted heavy leather blinders studded with copper rivets. An emergency modification Bram Ash had ordered two days prior. In Rookvale, draft beasts that caught sight of an unlit emergence void or the flickering, unnatural stride of a showed up double would snap their traces in blind terror, pitching wagons and drivers over the three-hundred-foot cliff edge into the river gorge.
Len Vey stood by the wheel of the sixth wagon, his chin buried deep in the collar of his woolen courier coat. His left arm was numb with the freezing mist, the split-ash splints feeling like two slabs of river ice strapped against his ribs. Every breath felt thin, tasting of coal soot and mold spores that he had coughed from his lungs…
