The water in the Alley of the Scourers was hot enough to soften the stitching on Ren’s boots.
It rose from the gutters in thick, rotten-egg waves. It carried the sour grease of the tanning pits and the stinging steam of raw glass-like run-off. Every few yards, an eddy hissed against the stone foundations of the apartments, spitting purple froth that adhered to the cedar posts like wet animal fat. Wherever that froth touched, the wood didn’t rot. It hardened, the fibers stiffening into brittle, gray-white quartz.
“Keep your hem out of the froth, Mira,” Ren called back.
His voice was muffled by the wool scarf tied across his mouth to filter the stone vapor. In his left hand, he held an iron-cased storm lantern whose tin reflector threw a narrow beam of yellow light through the swirling fog. In his right, he carried his ivory awl like a dagger, the silver metal ring held ready against his palm to test the balance of underwater cellar grates.
Behind him, Mira caught his sleeve with her left hand, her grip surprisingly firm for a girl who had spent the last two months confined to a cot.
Her right arm hung close to her side beneath the charcoal shawl. In the choking darkness between the apartments, the smoky quartz of her crystal-hardened forearm cast a faint lavender glow across the churning water. Every time her foot slipped on the slick cobblestones, the crystal chime within her ribs gave a sharp, ringing ring…
