Heth Ash stood on the lower landing of the wooden stairs, six feet above the churning floodwaters, her thin chest rattling like dry gourds as she coughed into the sleeve of her wool coat. The sulfur vapor rising from the cut was murder on her damaged lungs. Every breath felt as though someone had scraped the lining of her throat with a wire brush. That left her dizzy and nauseated from the lack of air.
Yet she kept her left hand clamped like an iron clamp around young Avel Tern’s small wrist.
The nine-year-old boy was shivering wildly, his face buried against her hip. His thin fingers grabbed a battered oilskin pocketbook that had belonged to his father. A tram guide-rod who had vanished into the Survey claim room four winters ago. “Heth,” the boy sobbed, his voice muffled by her coat. “The water is hot. It smells like dead sheep. I can hear the pipes crying.”
“Don’t listen to the pipes, Avel,” Heth whispered. He forced her voice to stay steady despite the violent trembling in her knees. “Look at the fifth riser. See the notch where the carpenter drove the iron nail? Put your boot right on that notch. Step where I step.”
