Bram Ash sat on an overturned oak nail keg near the southern freight bay of the tram shed, his heavy wool trousers dusted with dried lime. His sound left hand gripped the edge of the wood to keep his torso upright as the volunteer nurse worked behind him.
The nurse was an older woman named Sarah Vance. A former midwife from the River Ward whose three sons had died in the drainage chimney pipes during the eighth winter of the sky shield. She had a wooden basin of steaming vinegar-water resting between her knees, a pair of sharp horn tweezers in her teeth. A linen compress soaked in honey and boiled willow-bark paste held ready in her scarred fingers.
With cold, unsentimental care, Sarah used a dull bone spatula to slice through the crust of dried blood, machine oil, and sulfur powder that had cemented Bram’s woolen undershirt to the flesh of his right collar bone.
The wound had been made by a lead musket ball fired at point-blank range by a city court corporal during the dawn assault on the state oil depot. The heavy, soft-lead slug had entered two inches below the acromion process, gouged through the pectoralis major, splintered the underside of the collarbone. Then he exited through the upper back muscle behind his neck. That left a ragged, three-inch exit wound that smelled of burning powder and inflamed tissue.
