In the small, whitewashed bedchamber behind the Tram clinic, Bram Ash sat on the edge of his narrow wooden cot, his eyes fixed on the washstand six feet from his knees.
His right arm hung motionless in its black wool sling, the fractured collar bone bound tightly against his chest with oiled rawhide buckles. The skin around the bullet wound was hot, tight, and itchy beneath the clean linen dressings. The prickling, restless irritation that accompanied healthy granuloma formation as the broken bone edges knitted together in the clean air. His left hand rested flat upon his knee. His scarred fingers shook with a reflex, rhythmic shaking that he couldn’t suppress.
On the washstand, set between a clay pot water jug and a round shaving mirror, sat a Survey Office standard issue copper night-lamp.
It was a heavy, tube-shaped casting of solid brass, six inches in width and eight inches tall, fitted with an adjustable needle valve and a curved reflector of polished red copper. The pool was filled to the brim with treated green stone oil. The dense, chemical petroleum distillate that Chancellor Morn’s depots had refined specifically to maintain an emergence-suppressing flame. The flat flax wick was trimmed with hair-width care to exactly one-quarter of an inch. It burned with a low, pale-green flame that produced no crackle, no soot, and no warmth.
