The basement sickness theater beneath Ironfang Academy smelled of cold lime, carbolic soap, and hundreds of years of dried formaldehyde. Deep beneath the central cutting-open tiered arena, thick granite foundations padded the chamber from the rumble of heavy diesel transports on the street above. A single overhead razor-sharp lamp, fitted with a frosted daylight filter, cast a brilliant circle of light across the zinc-plated cutting table.
Arthur Vance adjusted the dual brass sight barrels of his stereo-magnifier, checking the focus with a clockwise twist of the knurled rack-and-pinion wheel. Through the 20x achromatic lenses, the sample filled his entire field of vision.
The patient lay on a padded warm-water cushion, swaddled in a clean square of raw, unwhitened linen. It was a young Scorch-Sparrow—no larger than Arthur’s closed fist and weighing barely forty-two grams. Four hours earlier, Arthur had pulled the bird from a backup exhaust chimney pipe behind the academy’s central foundry furnaces. At first glance, the creature looked like a lump of discarded coal coke. Its flight primaries were burned down to charred, hollow quills, its belly down was scorched away to bare, blistered skin. Its left ankle joint was bruised purplish-black from being jammed into an iron damper hinge.
