Two hours before dawn on Day 145, the wind atop the Spine had died to a bitter, whispering draft that carried the scent of crushed limestone powder and frozen iron. In the lowest vaults beneath Stonewake Citadel, sixty feet below the paved courtyard, the air was cold as well water and heavy with hundreds of years of undisturbed dust.
Fellis Dain walked the damp outer edge gallery with four Alderfast miners, their tin reflector lanterns swinging in measured arcs across the rough-hewn rock ribs. The youth held his wooden tally staff firmly in his uninjured right hand, his braced left arm strapped tightly against his chest inside his wool coat. At every cross-cut and air-flow chimney pipe, the miners thrust their lantern poles deep into the dark, lighting up empty tool racks, dry stone drainage troughs, and deserted sorting tables.
“Gallery seven, clear,” called out Varn, the eldest miner, his voice echoing flatly down the limestone drift. “No miners, no tools, no blankets. Even the grease lamps have been taken down from the wall sconces.”
“Check the emergency crawl-tubes,” Fellis instructed, tapping the rock ceiling with his staff. “The ones that lead toward the old eastern air-flow chimney. If a child crept back in to fetch a forgotten carved whistle, we would have to abort the entire set at the eighth beat.”
