Midnight in the Sump was darker than the inside of a sealed grain bin.
The sulfur smoke had settled into a choking blanket three feet above the water, muffling all sound except the croaking of marsh bullfrogs and the creak of waterlogged stilt-posts. The air smelled of dead vegetation and skin-burning salt water, burning the throat even through a vinegar-soaked mask.
Tomas knelt in the bottom of a narrow dugout skiff, his paddle across the boat sides. He wore his oilskin wading suit. Calfskin trousers treated with boiled linseed oil and animal fat, laced tight around his waist and calves. Over his face he had tied a double layer of vinegar-soaked linen, breathing in slow rhythms.
Beside him, Nessa sat in the bow, her sounding staff dipped into the black water.
“Two feet of water,” she signaled with two taps against the gunwale. “Three feet of soft peat beneath it. If you step out, don’t let your heel break the silt crust. Or you’ll sink to your ribs.”
Tomas nodded, catching an underwater willow root to steady the dugout against the levee bank.
Directly above them, perched on oak wooden support posts at the edge of the drainage canal, sat the rear of Master Apothecary Marrow’s medicine room. Through a square trapdoor cut into the overhanging privy floorboards, a foul trickle of wash-water dripped into the ditch.
