Caldrin announced itself by the colour of the sky.
The low clouds above the city held a dull copper glow long before Mara could distinguish the roofline. Then the road rounded the last shoulder, and the great stacks appeared between the moving ridges of smoke. Some burned pale. Others trailed dark across the light. Beneath them, buildings crowded the slopes around the buried heat works, their windows showing in strips where a street broke the mass.
Mara stood beside Varno’s lead wagon and breathed in.
“Missed it?” he asked.
“The smell? No.”
“The rest.”
She watched a shift train crawl across a high bridge, lamps swinging beneath its passenger roof. A woman leaned out to wave at someone on the lower road. The distance was too great for Mara to see whom she meant.
“Yes,” she said.
