The trail down from the terrace windbreak followed a narrow, blasted ledge of dark granite that hugged the eastern flank of the Star tower spur. Twelve years ago, country engineers had cleared this approach with heavy charges of black powder, cutting a service road wide enough for freight wagons hauling salt-glass panels and copper steam cooler plates to the summit. Now, frost and neglect had reduced the road to a dangerous shelf of broken shale.
Len led the file, his uninjured right hand running along the damp stone wall of the cliff face. Every thirty paces, a hooded safety lantern hung from an iron eye-bolt drilled into the rock. The lanterns were town property, fueled with low-grade vegetable oil that sputtered with a greasy, yellow flame through cracked mica panes. Their light didn’t penetrate the freezing sulfuric fog that rolled off the dead kilns of the Salt Ward below. It merely created small, sickly halos of amber mist that vanished three paces away.
Behind Len, Ivara Quill walked with the steady, measured stride of a mountain land-mapper. Her heavy iron sounding rod tapped against the shale at every second step. She tested the shelf for frost-heaves and hollow pockets. The sound was rhythmic and low: clink, step, clink, step.
