The escape from Safety check Bay Three was an explosion of choking darkness, burning animal fat, and blinding heat.
Above the floorboards, Tesk was shrieking in shrill, animal terror as the burning mutton fat caught the ragged hem of his linen tunic. He rolled across the planks, kicking wildly at the shattered pottery. Meanwhile, the older corporal roared through the smoke, slashing his saber downward at the open floor hole where he had seen a pair of hands vanish with the satchel.
The steel blade struck the brick collar of the bay with a spray of orange sparks, chipping a three-inch gouge from the stonework three inches above Fellis’s shoulder.
“Down! Back to the chimney pipes!” Kezra shouted, her voice swallowed by the crackle of burning pine.
She shoved Fellis backward into the brick tunnel. That kept her right arm locked over her waxed coat where the heavy, warm bulk of her recovered notebook rested safe against her ribs. The smoke was pouring down through the open grating in thick, oily waves. Acrid black soot from forty-year-old lard and sulfur-cured timber that burned the throat. Then it turned the eyes into weeping orbs of fire.
At the southern end of the channel, where they had crawled in beneath the clean-out arch, disaster met them.
