The cold on the outer terrace of the Star tower cut straight through two layers of boiled wool. Below the low roof wall, the sunken basin of Rookvale stretched into a black void without a single hearth-spark or domestic candle to mark where seven wards met.
Len Vey stood with his back to the granite stone railing. His left forearm was bound rigidly against his ribs inside an ash-wood splint and three yards of coarse linen. The dull, throbbing heat in the broken bone had settled into a steady ache that pulsed in time with his neck artery. With his uninjured right hand, he held his father’s silver pocket watch flat across his palm, tilting the scratched crystal toward the blue slit of a hooded safety lantern.
Three feet to his right, Bram Ash crouched behind the windbreak of an empty sandbag stone retaining wall. The former court guard’s heavy coat hung loose over his right shoulder, where dried drainage mud and yellow antiseptic grease stiffened the linen wrapping his bullet wound. Between his knees sat the brass kitchen timer Doma Reel had kept on the bread-bench in the Tram Ward depot. A square, clockwork box with a scarred fine china dial and a clockwork bell that had counted out ration turns for five winters.
