The Roost Below

Beneath the gilding, a gaslit shantytown, frozen at 1900, fully awake. The dead of the slaughter-coast aren't wicked — only wronged. And they want the ring broken. This is the bottom.

Before the gilding there was Corcoran's Roost — a shantytown ruled from a hut on the bluff by Paddy Corcoran of the Rag Gang, a high, poor, violent place that fought a rival colony on Clara's Hill and turned on the police for sport. They built the towers directly on top of it and set a Gothic inscription in the stone, the way you'd set a stone on a grave.

It did not take. The Roost is still down here, gaslit and salt-damp, the year frozen at 1900, and it is awake. The dead of the slaughter-coast are not wicked. They are wronged, which is worse, because the wronged are patient. They want the ring broken so the old century can climb back up the cliff. This is the bottom. This is where hope is supposed to end. Hold the key.