The water in the drainage chimney pipes of Low-Khorat didn’t smell like rain. It smelled of sulfur washings, spent animal fat. The bitter copper residue of illegal potion-made dyes dumped from the upper tanneries.
Ren Vale kept his right shoulder pressed against the dripping brickwork, guiding his boots along the slippery ledge of the aqueduct. With every four steps, his heels found the rusted iron rungs hammered into the stone. His left arm was held rigid behind him to steady his sister. Even through two layers of boiled wool and oilcloth, he could feel the cold streaming from her right side—not the damp chill of underground river fog, but the dry, zero-degree draught of turning to stone.
“Lift your foot three inches, Mira,” Ren murmured, his voice barely louder than the trickle of black water along the canal invert. “There’s an eroded mortar seam here. Don’t scrape the heel.”
“I have a quartz collarbone, Ren, not a wooden peg,” Mira replied softly. Her breath made a faint, high-pitched ringing sound as it passed her larynx, like the rim of a crystal goblet stroked with a damp finger. “And I can feel the draft coming from the south chimney pipe just as well as you can. It smells like dead mussels.”
