The stone under Noll Vey’s right boot carried the shudder of the gun-deck four hundred paces away.
Even without his left arm—the heavy granite limb having sheared off at the shoulder socket when the roof timber fell, leaving behind a jagged stump of calcified slate that hummed with white noise—the Dominion ledger kept him anchored to every inch of the hillside. His core chip burned steady beneath his stone ribs. The valley was an open palm laid against his marrow: he felt the damp spruce needles rotting along the low culverts, the cold iron trickle of the river through Mere’s lower sluice, and the three heavy siege mortars squatting in the fresh clay above the battery ditch.
Beside him on the spiral stairs, Tessa Dene kept one hand against his rough stone waist, guiding his bulk around the tight curve of the well. Her fingers were gray with dry lime from the collapsed archway above. At her hip, the old bread knife she had ground out of scrap hoop-iron clinked softly against her leather belt.
“Step down, Noll,” she said under her breath, her voice raw from breathing brick-dust. “Don’t lean against the casing. The mortar in that outer seam hasn’t set since breakfast.”
