At thirty minutes past one o’clock in the afternoon on Day 7, Len Vey reached the outer edge of the bitter salt melted rock waste beds on the western boundary of the Salt Ward.
He stood beside an overturned, iron-rimmed melted rock waste car whose rusted axle was half-buried in a drift of fine, chalk-white chemical dust. His breathing came in shallow, ragged rasps that tasted of calcined lime, sulfur, and bitter potash. The white dust hung in the stale air like a blinding fog, coating his eyelashes, sticking to the sweat on his temples, and caking the woolen fabric of his courier coat until he looked like a statue carved from limestone.
His left arm felt like a dead limb packed with broken glass.
The fever in his fractured left radius had intensified during the three-mile descent down the mountain switchbacks. The inflammation had migrated downward into the carpals of his wrist. That made his fingers feel swollen, numb, and cold as river clay within their linen bindings. Every jolt of his boots striking the uneven bitter salt crust had sent a sympathetic spike of agony into his shoulder. It tore at the bruised joint padding of his ribs. He used his sound right hand to support his left elbow. He lifted the weight of the rigid split-ash splints to take the grinding tension off his collarbone.
