Chapter 19: First Chain

The service shaft opened in the rubble of the demolished western wing, a stone-lined well four paces across with frost furred along its collar. Air came up out of it smelling of wet brick and rust. The iron rungs on its wall had rotted to orange scabs, and when the plumb-man hooked one with his boot it came away in flakes. Ilan stood at the collar with his right hand curled against his coat and his left arm strapped across his ribs. The left forearm had been waking since dawn, pins and needles from elbow to fingers, and the fingers would not close on anything. He could not climb a ladder. He could not have climbed these rungs if they had held. The guild's letter had come under the yard door with Crane's filing, before the bread was cut. A survey of the condemned estate for salvage, it said, entitling…