Through the swirling stone steam on the central platform, young Varo’s screams cut through the roar of the river like an iron whistle. The eighteen-year-old apprentice was lying on his side on the wet flat stone slabs behind the cracked marble stone stand, his gray wool tunic soaked with mud and blood. Across his right thigh lay a four-foot granite coping stringer, weighing nearly a ton, that had snapped from the upper stone railing when Sorell forced the wheel into Notch Twelve.
“Help me!” Varo sobbed, his fingernails clawing at the slippery stone. “Ren! Kael! Please don’t leave me! The stone is crushing my leg! The water is coming up!”
Davin Sorell stood less than six paces away, his hands still clamped to the bronze spokes of his seized wheel. He didn’t look down at the boy. He didn’t offer a word of comfort, nor did he reach for an iron pry-bar to relieve the weight. His feverish eyes were fixed on the sky. He waited for the sky signs that would never come, fully blind to the agony of the boy whose mother sold turnips on Fish Street.
Across the deep gap, Pella Rook lowered her spyglass. Her jaw set into a hard, cold line that would have made Hal Rook proud. “Sorell has abandoned him,” Pella said, turning to Eren Tal and Corvin Hest. “He’s letting that boy die on the stone to prove he’s still in command. Eren, bring up the timber sled. Corvin, get the screw-jack…
