The lime dust tasted like ash and bitter salt, coating Jon’s tongue until every breath felt like swallowing crushed bone.
He did not leave the side of the stone. He sat on the frozen flags in the widening pool of crimson slush, Bram’s blood soaking into the wool of his knees, holding the old mason’s rough, scarred right hand between both of his own. The skin was cooling rapidly, losing the warm, resilient vigor of a man who had lifted ash timber and swung iron beetles since the reign of King Malric.
Around them, the quarry was an amphitheater of grey ruins.
The smoke from the thermal crater had thinned, carried away by the freezing mountain wind that swept down from the high crags, leaving only the sharp, persistent stench of scorched vitriol and pulverized slate. High on the upper ledge, Garek had marshaled six town spearmen to clear the debris from the entrance of the haulage tunnel, their shovels scraping against the shale with hollow, rhythmic thuds.
They did not speak. They worked with the hushed, reverent silence of men digging a trench inside a churchyard.
“Jon,” Bram whispered, his chest hitching in a shallow, uneven spasm that brought a dark froth of blood to his grey lips. “Listen to me, lad. The cold... is coming up the shins.”
