At four in the morning, the second assault on Printer’s Alley came not from the cobblestones below, but from the freezing air above. The hired blades hired by the Iron Dike Trade ring had scaled the timber work frames of an adjoining grain warehouse. Then it made their way across the gabled roofs of St. Jude’s Parish. They carried wicker baskets filled with sulfur pots, clay pitch bottles, and resin-soaked rags.
Up on the roof of Thorne’s print works, the cold was brutal. A skin of white frost coated the slate shingles. That made every step a dangerous gamble against the seventy-foot drop into the alley below. But Wren and thirty river dyers were waiting.
The dyers were men and women accustomed to steam, boiling vats, and toxic chemical washes. They wore heavy cowhide wading boots with iron ice-creepers strapped to their soles. Their woolen smocks were soaked in salt water and dried lime to resist sparks. Set every six feet along the ridge-beam were sixty wooden barrels filled with river water and heavy ditch mud, hauled up the internal fire-hoist during the preceding afternoon.
Tomas climbed through the roof-hatch, his pack frame left below. His leather coat buttoned was tight to his chin. The wind from the river cut across the chimney pots like a razor. He carried the acrid stench of burning charcoal and wet slate.
