Sella Rusk kept her back pressed against the square oak timber of the pump gallery archway, her round ash shield held at an angle that screened the yellow glow of the lanterns from the lower drift.
Down the long, dark corridor behind her, the iron haulage rails stretched three hundred yards toward the main shaft cage. For the moment, the rails were silent; only the slow, rhythmic drip-drip-drip of greasy water falling from the ceiling timbers broke the underground quiet. But Sella had spent nine years patrolling the southern borders for the Royal Survey; she knew the heavy, metallic smell of a winch cable when grease was warmed by friction, and she knew that the morning guard shift at the pit-head turned every two hours like clockwork.
Inside the red-lit chamber, Ossa Flint was already stepping forward toward the basalt plinth, the brass-mounted optical prism gripped in her right hand, her thin shoulders hunched as if preparing to leap into a furnace.
Renn reached out with his ash crutch and blocked the artificer’s path.
The heavy wood struck the stone floor with a dull, hollow thud that made the nearest seated miner flinch without breaking his chant.
“Hold your boots, Madam Flint,” Renn said in a harsh, gravelly whisper.
