Bram Ash stepped into the dark water on the left side of the anchor stone stand, the sulfur sludge swirling sluggishly around his boot tops.
The granite block beneath his feet was coated in a slippery film of stone grease. But he braced his heels against the raised chisel marks of the curb. He set his weight low. His left arm—his only functional limb—was trembling with the dull, shivering tremor of rising blood-poison fever. The gunshot wound in his right shoulder felt like a fistful of hot coals jammed beneath the collar bone, pulsing in violent synchrony with the sixty-cycle spark hum that droned through the iron plates of the cabinet. Every breath tasted of scorched iron, stale machine oil, and the sharp, sour tang of hydrogen sulfide leaking from the lower drainage cry-holes.
He raised the heavy bronze Tram delegate key toward the left escutcheon.
The lock face was crusted with thick, chalky green rust, undisturbed since Doma Reel had pushed in her original commission seal ten winters ago during the town consolidation. Across the bronze casting, nearly wiped out by rusting, ran the stamped stone carving of the old Free Country Board: VOX POPULI, VIS CIVITATIS. The voice of the people, the power of the state.
