Three hundred and twelve steps of wet, uneven granite connected the High Terraces of the summoners to the squalor of Lowbank. In summer, wealthy scholars took sedan chairs down to the walkway, carried by sweating dock laborers who were paid two copper pennies and forbidden to speak. Today, the steps were a cascading waterfall of brown rainwater and coal grit, slick as sheep fat under the soles of heavy work boots.
Pella Rook led the descent, her heavy cart driver boots finding the worn hollows in the stone where ages of water-haulers and coal-heavers had stepped before her. Behind her came Kel Dorr. It grabbed the pine crate of thirty-eight discharged lead tokens to his chest beneath a stiff oilcloth tarpaulin, his breath coming in short, ragged gasps. Bringing up the rear was Corvin Hest, using a hickory walking stick shod with an iron metal ring to brace his bad knee against the steep, slippery risers.
Above them, the academy palaces sat silent and dark, their marble rows of stone pillars gleaming like cold, neglected tombs against the bruised purple of the storm clouds. Below them, Lowbank was a cooking pot of wild, soot-streaked noise.
The sense world changed every fifty steps. First came the clean rain, pine needles, and cold ozone of the terrace gardens. Then the sour sulfur stench of the chimney pipes and the bitter-salt bite of kiln dust. And finally the heavy, choking odor of soaked clay, horse dung, wet wool, and rotting harbor weed that…
