The heat from the pitch torches bit into Bram Ash’s face. But the cold inside his collarbone was worse. The lead ball from the depot guard’s carbine was still lodged beneath his right shoulder blade. He was surrounded by a swelling pocket of inflamed tissue that throbbed with every shallow breath. He could feel the fever crawling up the side of his neck. That made the shadows along the brick bridge pillar waver and split into double edges. His mouth tasted of copper and stale ditch water. But he kept his balance on the wet sandstone steps.
He took another half-pace forward. He cleared the door frame so that his body stood directly between Jarek Thrum’s melted rock waste rake and Len’s fractured arm. The young courier was nineteen, stubborn as seasoned hickory, and carrying an inherited postal arrogance that told him a uniform could stop a mob. Bram had thirty years on the boy. He knew what forty hungry men with iron tools smelled like before the blood started running: stale sweat, damp wool, and the sharp, vinegar tang of pure panic.
“Put the rake down, Jarek,” Bram said, his left hand coming off his holster and dropping open at his side. He didn’t unlatch the revolver flap. Against forty men on a narrow stone stair, six cartridges were just an invitation to be torn into ribbons. “You want someone to answer for the boys from the Salt Ward? Look at my coat.”
