Midnight passed over the valley of Lathmere like a funeral shroud. The storm had ceased its wild, gusting flurries, settling into an unbroken, freezing deluge that fell straight down through the black air, drowning the sound of the wind beneath the huge, nonstop roar of the Gray Rush.
In the high loft of the boatwright’s shed on the rim of the Ferry Turning Basin, Pella Rook sat on a dry bale of straw, her back propped against a massive tie-beam of hewn spruce. Beside her, Eren Tal lay stretched out on an oiled tarpaulin, an arm thrown across his forehead. His heavy chest rose and falling in the deep, troubled sleep of total physical tiredness.
Between them hung three lanterns, their animal fat wicks trimmed low to save oil. The yellow light flickered across the storage rack suspended from the rafters directly above their heads.
There, sheltered from the leaking shingles by two layers of greased canvas, lay the three spare offering buffer sleeves that Jo Saye and Dima Fen had prepared. Each sleeve was a twenty-foot metal tube of four-ply reed canvas, neatly rolled and lashed with soft hemp twine, their forged steel band-clamps hanging from wooden pegs like dark iron garlands.
