The climb from the Tram cut up to the Quarry rim was a grueling three-mile ascent along the unlit limestone switchbacks, cut directly into the upright cliff face that separated the heavy-duty floor from the upper residential terraces. With the Tram anchor dead, the lower valley was a sea of total, choking blackness. Every street lantern, every switch lamp, and every emergency hall line had gone dark. That left the vast rail yard looking like an abandoned iron graveyard under a ceiling of dead soot.
The coalition column moved in single file, guided only by the narrow, hooded yellow beam of Len’s courier lantern. Ivara Quill led the ascent, her ten-foot jointed sounding pole tapping the limestone pavers at five-pace intervals with metronomic regularity. Her left coat sleeve was pinned neatly to her wool breast, ending at the elbow where her forearm had been crushed in the central chimney pipes seven years ago. But her right arm was thick and rope-veined, swinging the bronze-shod pole with easy balance.
Behind Ivara marched Melli Dorn, her broad shoulders hunched beneath two twenty-pound heavy clay jars of sealing pitch slung in canvas panniers across her back. Following her came Varner Crane and three quarry riggers, their boots slipping on the icy rock dust as they hauled four sixty-foot coils of wire-heavy canvas hose intended for the water jacket. Len brought up the rear. His right hand gripped a stout ash walking staff, his fractured left arm strapped tightly against his ribs beneath his…
