The iron grate leading up from the wine vault to the street level was hidden beneath the floorboards of an abandoned cooperage.
Ren Vale pushed the hatch up two inches, his knuckles raw where the salt water had stripped the skin from his joints. The air that drifted down into the cellar was freezing, thick with gray wood ash and the bitter stench of burning pitch. From the north, the sky was not dark. It was lit up by a sickly, flickering violet aurora. The light of the shattered Grand Barrier Dome refracting the fires of the Upper Citadel across the low-hanging clouds.
“Ten paces to the corner of the leather market,” Ren-the-Cinder whispered from directly beneath Ren’s boots, his breath hot against Ren’s calves. “The alley is blind on the left. On the right, there’s an iron butcher’s hook hanging from an oak top door beam. If we pass the butcher’s hook, we reach the dry under-road drain that leads directly to the Middle Spire aqueduct.”
“Is the alley clear?” Ren asked.
“Clear of beasts,” the Coward muttered, his brass keys clinking faintly in his pocket. “Inevitability Sense says zero point zero two percent chance of a shard-hound within fifty yards. But there’s a patrol of Iron Guards sixty paces up the avenue. They have repeating heavy steel crossbows and two lantern-bearers. If we move now. Meanwhile, the wind is blowing the smoke across the cobbles, we slip past them like animal fat down a warm pipe. A clean…
