The iron narrow high walkway rattled beneath the thin soles of Heth Ash’s shoes. It shook in time with the shudder of the high-pressure chimney pipes behind the brick stonework. Each breath felt like swallowing dry cinders. Her lungs, scarred by four winters of skin-burning bitter salt dust from the Salt Ward lehrs, hitched in her chest with a dry, wooden rattle that forced her to double over. Her forehead pressed against the cold zinc of the safety railing.
Young Avel Tern was clutching the hem of her woolen coat with both hands. His knuckles were white, grease-caked from the locomotive pit, his small thumbs hooked into the coarse weave so hard that the wool stretched into tight cones. Against his narrow ribs, tucked beneath his grease-stained smock, he carried the stiff leather binding of his dead father’s land-mapper book. He was ten years old, small for his winters, his face smudged with soot and streaked with the pale runnels of dried tears. He didn’t cry aloud. In the Tram shelters, children who cried aloud drew the attention of the night-hunting ward court guards and the unassigned copies that prowled the dark rail cuts.
“Keep your boots moving, Avel,” Heth whispered, her voice cracked, scraping past her throat cords like gravel in an iron chute. “Don’t look down at the steam. Look straight at the green lantern glass on the warehouse doorstep. Count your steps.”
