Thirty feet beneath the frozen soil of the agricultural terraces, the main boiler cellar smelled of drenched coal ash, iron rust, and stale, lime-crusted river water.
The three huge fire-tube boilers that had heated the greenhouse irrigation circuits for twelve years stood dead and dark in their brick saddles. An hour earlier, under Ivara Quill’s precise instructions, the stokers had drawn the coal fires, shoveling forty tons of blazing bright hard coal into the cooling troughs. The resulting billows of rotten-egg steam had long since condensed on the vaulted ceiling, hanging in greasy, yellow drops that fell with an irregular plink... Plink into the puddles between the flat stone slabs.
Without the coal fires, the cellar was freezing. The cold of the mountain rock seeped through the three-foot granite walls. That turned the air so chill that Len Vey’s breath plumed in thick, white ribbons whenever he shifted his weight.
Len stood on the lower check platform, his back braced against an iron support post to relieve the pressure on his left hip. His left arm was numb within its split-ash casing, the hemp sling digging into the bruised muscle over his collarbone. In his right hand, he held his sounding pole, its brass metal ring planted firmly in the lime mortar between two floor slabs.
