The West Gate of Crown-Reach didn’t welcome travelers. It weighed them.
Three tiers of soot-blackened granite rose ninety feet into the drizzling autumn sky, their lower courses thick with grease from two hundred years of animal fat-drays and coal carts. Cold rain drifted from the slate ridges of the upper city. That turned the horse manure and stone-dust of the outer ditch into a slick gray slurry that sucked at wagon tires.
Tomas Reed sat on the box of the four-horse heavy cart, the reins looped through his left hand. His right hand rested on his thigh inside the buckled calfskin brace. Cold dampness always found the scar tissue first. Beneath his charcoal-gray wool cuff, the jagged seam where broken eel-glass had cut the tendon sheath twenty months ago pulled taut, like soaked hemp dried too fast near a fire. He bent his thumb against his forefinger. He felt the stiff drag of gristle across the forearm bone. Sixty-five percent grip—enough to hold a crowbar or land-mapper’s rod, though if a lead trace snapped, his left arm would have to bear the jerk.
Beside him, Nessa Vale had her oilskin collar turned high against the drift. Her leather instrument satchel lay in her lap, its brass buckles green from the southern marshes, and her sound hearing horn was tucked into her belt loop. Her gray eyes moved across the outer castle wall, cataloging the cracks where the arch stones met the foundation.
