The Grey Shroud of Painted Post
The fog came off the ridge not as vapor but as a grey shroud, smelling of wet slate and the slow rot of unburied things. It swallowed the gallows and the assay office, leaving only the yellow bleed of kerosene lamps from the Gilded Rot. Inside, the air was thick with the reek of damp wool and the sour breath of men who had run out of road. Larken sat with his back to the cedar wall, his good eye tracking the ghost-shapes beyond the glass. The Chicago men were no longer a rumor; they were a weight in the atmosphere, heavy as a thunderclap before the rain. Artemicia stood by the stove, the heat pulling the scent of alkali from her duster, her thumb hooked in the belt of her Remington. The blood-bond between them was a frayed rope, sparking in the dark. Every creak of the floorboards felt like a hammer cocking.
