The grinding began in the knees.
It wasn’t the familiar, dull ache of a seventeen-hour smelting shift, nor the dry burn of fire ash settling into raw bronchi. It was the distinct, sickening shriek of pulverizing stone inside a locked joint.
Across the flat stone slabs of the Seventh Ward’s lower water gate, three fire slaves hit the floor at the exact same instant.
Their heavy iron scoops clattered against the dark rock gutter. It sent showers of hot melted rock waste skittering across the floorboards. The men didn’t cry out with words. They produced a strangled, rhythmic whistling sound as their diaphragms seized against turning to stone ribcages.
Lin Ke dropped his soot rake.
The heat from Blast Furnace Four beat against the left side of his face, baking his grease-smeared skin to the threshold of a first-degree blister. His own Ashen Iron bone lattice gave a deep, sympathetic twinge. A low ringing shaking that pulled at his femurs like an ungrounded high-voltage line humming near steel heavy beams.
“Don’t move them,” Lin Ke said, his voice flat and raspy from sulfur smoke.
Two junior haulers had already stepped forward to drag the fallen men toward the cooling trough. They froze, looking back at Lin Ke with eyes wide and white against faces blackened by coke dust.
