It was raining on Floor 32.
Not hard. A fine cold drizzle coming down out of a ceiling of low grey cloud that sat close enough to the ground to take the tops off the hills in the distance.
They were standing on a road.
It was a causeway, properly built — four metres wide, packed stone and earth, raised about two metres above the ground on either side, with the remains of low kerbing along the edges.
And on either side of it, going away for kilometres in both directions, was marsh.
Flat brown water in sheets and channels, reed beds standing in it in dark clumps, and black mud between them that James could tell from thirty feet away would take a man to the hip. Dead trees stood up out of it here and there with nothing on them.
The air smelled of cold standing water and of something underneath it, rotting slowly.
And there was a sound.
