The wind coming off the Weeping Delta tasted of sour malt vinegar, wet peat, and ancient rot.
Tomas Reed paused on the crowned gravel of the south embankment road, shifting the ash-wood pack frame on his shoulders. The cold autumn air bit at the knuckles of his left hand. There, the white scar from the under-road drain glass pulled tight across the tendon sheath. He bent his fingers against the stiff leather of his calfskin brace—thumb to index, thumb to middle, thumb to ring, thumb to little finger—ensuring the morning ache had not locked the joints before he touched the haulage ropes.
Beside him, Nessa Vale lowered her brass sound horn from her ear, the green rust-spotted bell catching the pale light filtering through the marsh mist. Her boots were caked in blue clay to the ankle buckles, her land-mapper gaiters soaked from the slog along the drainage dikes.
“Look at the timber,” Nessa said, her voice pitched with clipped care. She tapped the brass tube against her palm. “That’s not green willow fencing. That’s seasoned black oak, three feet thick at the butt, driven twelve feet into the peat. You don’t drive seasoned heartwood into mud unless you intend to stay until the wood turns to coal.”
