Forty feet beneath the surface of the Inland Sea, time was measured not in minutes, but in the number of strokes a man’s heart could sustain before his breath turned to poison.
Tomas knelt in the freezing slurry on the granite doorstep of the balance weight well, his lead-soled boots braced against the corner of the stonework. His vulcanized canvas suit was cold as well-water, the fabric pressed so tight against his ribs that every breath in felt like lifting a twenty-pound paving stone with his chest.
Sile Rook lay half-pinned beneath the four-ton casting of the balance weight carriage, his copper helmet tilted sideways against the granite wall. Sile’s right hand was clamped around his lifeline. His thumb was pressed steady against his copper breastplate in the sign that meant: I’m alive. Cut the iron.
Tomas placed the cutting edge of the three-foot bronze cold chisel directly against the fouled three-inch plow-steel cable. The bronze of the chisel was an ancient alloy of copper, tin, and phosphorus, hardened under a trip-hammer to a temper that could bite into steel without sparking or shattering under impact.
He gripped the eight-sided shank of the chisel in his scarred left hand. The cold had numbed the skin of his palm. But the deep, scarred gristle where the heavy cart cable had torn through his wrist eight years before throbbed with a vicious, burning ache that cut straight through the numbness. The leather brace was soaked with icy water, biting into the flesh…
