The red dust didn’t drift like ordinary soil. It clung to the skin like crushed rust, hot and metal, tasting of old iron and dried copper.
Ren Vale hauled the leading harness of the two-wheeled handcart over a jagged shelf of calcinated limestone. The grease in the axle box had melted forty leagues back. Every turn of the birch-spoke wheel produced a shrill groan that set his teeth on edge. Behind him, eighteen refugees from the Low-Khorat tenement wards dragged their battered handbarrows through the narrow canyon mouth, their heads wrapped in ragged grey linen, their lips blackened and split by the dry wind of the Western Escarpment.
Beneath his lambskin apron, the Speculum of Forfeited Paths pressed cold against the left side of his ribs. It was the only cold thing within fifty miles. Even through the coarse wool of his tunic, the gold-silver metal bezel of the mirror pulsed with a dull, rhythmic throb, counting down the hours of daylight.
“Rest the spokes, Ren,” a voice said from the shadow of the cart’s canvas hood. “If that left hub splits now, you’ll be carrying me on your back. You don’t have the legs for it.”
Ren paused, leaning his weight against the polished ash shafts of the cart. He wiped his forearm across his forehead. That left a smeared streak of violet ink and red grit across his brow.
