The wooden bosun’s chair tilted three inches to the left as Tomas Reed swung clear of the hundred-foot balcony.
Beneath the soles of his heavy cowhide boots, there was suddenly nothing. No stone ledge, no iron railing, no reassuring friction of packed street gravel. There was only eighty deep-water lengths of gray autumn air, whistling cold through the gaps in his wool trousers. The distant, glistening slate roofs of Weaver’s Row receding into a tiny, patterned floor of dark shingles and smoking chimney pipes.
The four-strand manila thick ship rope groaned against the forged bronze figure-eight descender at his chest. The smell of hot sheep fat rose from the friction wraps as the rope fed through the bronze neck, giving off a faint, sweet smoke in the freezing mist.
“Steady on the brake hand, Tomas,” Sile Rook’s voice drifted down from the balcony above. Sile was leaning over the stone railing, his arms braced on a lignum vitae snatch block. His scarred face was tight with concentration. “Kael is holding the steam rope winch on the second pawl. If you swing out, let the line take the load. Don’t kick the wall.”
Tomas didn’t kick the wall. He kept his feet together, knees slightly bent, his boot-toes touching the cold marble fluting of the Spire with just enough pressure to keep the chair from spinning like a bobbin.
