Night fell over the Iron Scarp. Then, the desert bled its warmth into the void like a butchered ox.
Within an hour of the sun slipping behind the red dark rock bluffs, the liquid silver inside Ren’s repair kit plunged forty degrees. The red dust that had baked into skin during daylight turned to frosted grit, carried on a howling wind whistling through the timber palisades of the Sieve Gate.
The eighteen refugees huddled beneath overturned handcarts, shivering under ragged wool blankets. Two elderly weavers from Low-Khorat were already delirious with dehydration, dry tongues clicking against their palates as they murmured prayers to long-dead guild saints.
Ren sat on an upturned nail keg near the tongue of his cart, knees pulled to his chest. His fingers were stiff with cold, but he kept his carved mammoth-bone awl turning slowly in his palm. That let the cold ivory center his breathing.
Beside him, Mira sat wrapped in her charcoal shawl. The freezing air affected her differently than the others. Where the refugees curled into shivering balls, Mira sat upright, spine straight against the cart wheel. In the pale moonlight, her right arm and collarbone gleamed with an icy, semi-clear soft glow, refracting starlight in deep violet veins that pulsed with a faint, steady heartbeat.
