Midnight had passed, and the Great Sky-Spire stood against the darkness like a huge, white obelisk carved from frozen moonlight.
The market square of Weaver’s Row was deserted, evacuated not by court order, but by the cold, instinctual terror of the people who lived beneath its shadow. The cabbage carts were gone. The dyer’s vats were covered with wet canvas tarpaulins. The windows of the four-story apartments were shuttered tight. Even so, here and there, the pale, yellow flicker of an animal fat candle showed between the cedar slats where families sat fully dressed. He waited for the sky to fall.
On the flat lead roof of the Crypt Chapel, twenty paces from the Spire’s western stone support prop, a small coke fire bowl glowed dull red. It cast flickering shadows across the coils of golden manila thick ship rope and the heavy oak bosun’s chairs.
Master Rigger Kael stood by the steam rope winch, his boiler hissing softly, a faint plume of gray steam venting from the brass safety cock into the freezing night air. He turned the steam valve with an oily rag. He watched the brass pressure pointer settle at eighty pounds to the square inch. The twin cast-iron cylinders of the winch chuffed rhythmically. That turned the heavy lignum vitae drum with a low, powerful growl that shook through the lead roof.
