At Milestone Seven, the switchback road crested the intermediate spur of the western ridge. He opened out onto a broad, paved terrace that overlooked the entire southern half of the Rookvale basin.
Len Vey signaled for a five-minute brake-check to allow the steam to clear from the mules’ flanks and let the wheel hubs cool. While the drivers checked the iron linchpins on the wagon axles and inspected the lashings on Melli’s sixteen glass barrows, Len walked to the low stone low roof wall that bordered the cliff edge, leaning his uninjured shoulder against an ancient dressed block of granite.
He looked down into the valley he had entered seven days ago.
The transformation of the province was visible even through the sulfur fog. For twelve years, Rookvale had appeared from this height as a solid, unbroken lake of velvety blackness, punctured only by the evil violet arcs of the city court transformer towers and the sickly yellow squares of the curfew lanterns. It had been a landscape where the dark was not merely an absence of light, but an active, registered medium. A hungry fluid through which guards wearing dead faces could swim from ward to ward via the underground anchor network.
