The wind that howled through the Basalt Teeth after nightfall carried no moisture, only the dry, metal grit of falling soot.
Beneath the overhang of black dark rock, the iron fire bowl burned with a dull, blue-tinged glow. Ren Vale Prime sat with his back pressed against the rock, his knees drawn up. An iron cup was resting between his boots. Inside the cup was a slurry of crushed pine charcoal and scorched binding-thick parchment shavings, stirred into three fingers of cold well-water.
The slurry looked like liquid shoe polish. It smelled of sulfur and dead animal fat.
Ren lifted the cup, swallowed a mouthful, and forced his throat to stay open. The bitter-salt grit coated his tongue like river silt. But as it reached his stomach, the hungry fire behind his ribs quieted. His fingers unclenched from the handle of his mammoth ivory awl.
“Disgusting,” Vane murmured from across the fire, though he didn’t look up from polishing his gold-trimmed counting frame with a silk handkerchief. “A master keeper dining on chimney sweepings. If the High court guild-masters saw you now, they’d revoke your servant contract out of sheer aesthetic insult.”
“It keeps the summons bound,” Ren Prime rasped, his voice raw. He wiped a smudge of black slurry from his bottom lip with the frayed cuff of his sleeve. “And it keeps me upright. That’s all the ledger needs.”
