The river wall below the South Weirs was a lonely, dripping wilderness of black granite blocks, rotting timber wooden support posts, and tangled mats of river weed. At two o’clock in the morning, under the cover of a dense, choking river fog that smelled of sewage, decaying eels, and bitter silt stench, two men moved along the narrow, slimy stonework ledge that separated the churning current from the city’s foundations.
Korr Var walked ahead, his boots fitted with iron ice-creepers that bit into the slick river mud coating the stones. In his left hand he shielded a dark-lantern, its shutter cracked open just half an inch to cast a pencil-thin beam of light along the mortar courses. Behind him came Eren Tal. It carried a heavy canvas tool-roll containing cold chisels, brass feeler gauges, and a spring-loaded line weight.
“Watch the slip at the sixth pier, Korr,” Eren muttered through his woolen scarf. “The wash from the midnight tugs has undercut the bottom cut stone. The stone is rocking two inches on its bed.”
Korr paused, steadying himself against the massive granite wall. Here, forty feet below the fancy mansions of the High Crest, the physical reality of the city was laid bare. The wall was not a seamless monument of eternal stone. It was an aging, patched patchwork of eighty-year-old river stonework, held together by lime mortar that was being steadily scoured away by the relentless high-pressure thrust of the Gray Rush.
