Bram Ash escorted Len through the fortified archway that separated South Depot Two from the lower commercial alleys of Gate Street. They walked thirty paces down a narrow, cobblestone alley enclosed between thirty-foot granite retaining walls that dripped with black, greasy moisture,
Gate Street was not a commercial avenue in any normal sense. It was an enclosed stone trench, fifty feet below the upper artillery low roof walls, connecting the customs citadel to the lower rail marshaling yards. The apartments rising on either side were massive, windowless barracks built of rough-hewn granite blocks. Their doorways barred with was heavy iron grates, their gutters clogged with black coal mud and frozen horse manure.
Every two hundred paces, an armed town court guard stood beneath a sputtering copper street lamp, his hooked pruning blade resting across his chest, his eyes scanning the empty street with paranoid vigilance.
The curfew in Gate Ward was total. Since the fourth winter of the emergency, no civilian worker was allowed on the streets after seven o’clock without a signed night-work permit stamped by the District Judge. Anyone caught outside without a lantern and a permit was arrested as an unlisted vagrant, stripped of their shoes, and marched to the intake cells beneath the Survey citadel.
Bram led Len toward the hostel door. Then, the distant, mournful chime of the central curfew bell echoed from the ridge. Seven heavy, iron strokes that boomed through the freezing mist like the tolling of a funeral knell.
The street emptied instantly. The few wagon drivers and laborers who were lingering near the coal chutes scurried into their tenement doorways like rats slipping into floorboards. Their boots splashed through the dirty slush, their heavy oak doors slamming shut with hollow, deadening thuds. Stopping before a massive timber door banded with three-inch iron straps.
A faded, weather-beaten wooden board hung above the heavy iron knocker: Town GUEST HOSTEL. LICENSED TRANSIT LABOR ONLY. But carved deeply into the granite top door beam beneath the painted wood was the older, true stone carving that twelve years of emergency rule had never managed to chisel away: DETENTION BARRACKS NUMBER THREE.
Bram pulled a heavy iron ring key from his tunic, pushed in it into the massive deadbolt. Then he turned it with two hands. The lock screeched with a gritty, metal groan of unoiled tumblers. The heavy door swung inward into underground gloom.
The inside was a cavernous, vaulted hall carved directly out of the mountain bedrock beneath the Gate castle walls. It was eighty paces long and thirty wide, unpartitioned, and damp as a limestone mine. Long wooden sleeping benches, layered with rotting gray straw and stained burlap sacking, were stacked three tiers high along the dripping walls. The only heat came from a single cast-iron stove in the center of the hall. It burned smoking clinkers of low-grade lignite coal. It cast an oily, reddish glare across the damp rafters without raising the heat in the room above freezing.
The air was dense, cold, and nauseating. It smelled of wet wool, sour sweat, stale cabbage soup, and the clear, sweetish chemical stench of cheap carbolic disinfectant used to scrub the latrine trenches at the far end of the room.
‘You stay inside until the third bell tomorrow morning, Vey,’ Bram said. He stood on the threshold, his eyes scanning the shadowed bunks. ‘The outside door is bolted from the outside at eight o’clock. The night patrol sweeps the alley every twenty minutes with copper lanterns. If you step out that door without a court guard’s escort, the sentries on the narrow high walkways shoot on sight.’
‘And the outward lane at the canopy?’ Len asked, unhitching his courier satchel from his shoulder.
‘Opens at six in the morning,’ Bram replied, his voice flat and weary. ‘I will come for you at five-thirty. I will escort you to the cashier’s wicket, verify your discharge token, and see you past the turnstiles. If you have any sense left in that northern head of yours, you will take your empty barrow and run all the way to Oakhaven without looking back.’
Bram turned to leave, then paused, his hand resting on the heavy oak door. He looked at Len, his bloodshot eyes catching the dull red glow of the lignite stove.
‘Don’t try anything foolish tonight, boy,’ Bram whispered, his jaw tightening. ‘The Survey Office has eyes in every shadow. They know who you’re, they know what your father did, and they’re waiting for you to give them an excuse.’
Bram pulled the heavy door shut. The iron deadbolt slammed into place from the outside with an ear-splitting, final thud that echoed off the stone vaulting.
Len stood on the threshold, letting his eyes adjust to the murky reddish gloom. Through the soles of his boots, Road Sense reported the slick, greasy film of coal sludge that coated the slate floor. He walked slowly down the central aisle, his boots making no sound on the stones.
There were five other men in the hall, huddled close around the iron stove like refugees around a dying campfire. They didn’t look up when Len passed. Their eyes were fixed on the glowing red grate of the stove, their shoulders hunched under threadbare woolen blankets.
Len walked to the far rear corner of the barracks, choosing a bottom bunk tucked between a massive granite pillar and the rear wall. It was the most defensible position in the hall. His back was protected by eighteen inches of solid mountain stone, his flank was covered by the stonework pillar. He had a clear view of both the main entrance door and the iron coal intake hatch set into the ceiling fifteen paces away.
He set his satchel down on the wooden bench, tested the straw with his gloved hand, and sat down.
The straw was damp, smelled of mold and rodent droppings, and offered little heat padding against the freezing granite beneath. But Len didn’t care about comfort. He unbuttoned his coat, checked that his father’s cracked brass bell was securely muffled in its wool wrap. Then he settled his boots onto the flat stone slabs.
He had three hours before he had to move. Three hours to listen, observe, and prepare for the run Inside Detention Barracks Number Three, the silence was broken only by the steady, wet dripping of water drops from the rock ceiling into zinc tubs set between the bunks:
Drip... Splash... Drip...
Len walked the outer edge of the cavernous hall, his boots testing the slime on the stone floor. Road Sense hummed quietly through his soles, reporting the load-bearing shape of the room. The rear wall was solid mountain granite, keyed thirty feet into the living bedrock. The floor was composed of heavy slate slabs resting on a foundation of compacted river gravel. And twelve feet above his head, set into the vaulting near the rear corner, sat an iron coal chute three feet square, covered by a heavy cast-iron grating.
He looked closely at the coal chute.
The grating was secured with two sliding iron bolts. But the hinges were rusted, their pins loose in their stone sockets. A thin, freezing draft of fresh night air blew through the chute. It carried the sharp, clean smell of unwashed hard coal and fell drizzle.
That chute led directly up into the service lane behind Depot Two. Less than forty paces from the covered lean-to where Crate Three lay hidden.
It was an escape route.
If the main oak door was bolted from the outside at eight o’clock, he didn’t need to pick the deadbolt or risk an open face-off with the sentries in the alley. He could climb the timber posts of the three-tiered bunk, reach the iron coal hatch, slide the rusted bolts, and crawl up into the depot yard under cover of the darkness.
He sat down on the edge of the lower bunk. He pulled his knees up to his chest, resting his chin on his crossed arms. His left wrist was pulsing with that strange, rhythmic warmth. The sixth milestone reminding him that time was running out, that every passing minute was dragging him closer to global midnight.
To the Tram Ward.
The guest barracks was an engine of quiet despair. In the far corner near the latrine trench, an old carter with a broken collarbone was groaning in his sleep, his breath whistling through cracked teeth. Above the groaning came the ceaseless, rhythmic ticking of the water drops falling from the stone vaulting into the zinc buckets, marking the passage of the twelve-year night with high-pressure care.
Len unlaced his left boot, checking the rawhide tongue and the linen stitching along the welt. The leather was damp. But the seams were sound, capable of withstanding the dynamic shocks of an emergency sprint across the rail cuts. He tightened the laces back down, knotting the cord with a double courier hitch. Then he leaned his head back against the cold mountain granite. He closed his eyes, not to sleep, but to count the seconds until eight o’clock. Every muscle in his legs remained taut, ready to spring into action the instant the outside deadbolt clicked shut.