Bram Ash leaned his sound left shoulder against the cold iron railing of Platform One. His fingers shook as he worked the loading lever of his service revolver. The carbolic-soaked bandages around his right shoulder were soaked through with dark, yellow-green pus, the infection throbbing in time with the rapid, shallow beating of his heart. Every breath brought a taste of copper and bile to his tongue, the blood-poison fever clouding the edges of his vision with grey static.
He clamped his teeth into the greasy wool of his neckerchief. That forced his eyes to focus through the dense curtain of steam that hung over the flooded rail cut below.
The force advancing along the underwater track bed was not a disorderly mob. It was a tuned enforcement squad dispatched by Chancellor Morn’s executive clerk hall, combining the lethal physical discipline of living court guards with the unbending, zero-drag persistence of showed up doubles.
At the front moved six living Star tower court guards, their long oilskin coats buttoned tight to the throat. Their heads wrapped in was heavy brass helmets fitted with mica visors and charcoal respirators. In their gloved hands they carried short-barreled brass carbines and four-foot steel pry bars, their boots sloshing heavily through the three-foot flood of boiling wastewater. They moved with the cautious, deliberate steps of men who knew the scalding heat of the water would melt the skin from their shins if their rubberized waders were punctured.
