The distortion began in the salt cellars shortly after midnight.
It was not a sudden explosion of rock. It was a slow, grinding tilt of the bedrock, as though an immense shoulder beneath the hill were settling deeper into the earth to find a firmer footing.
Standing in the central communication corridor, Noll Vey felt the shift through the soles of his basalt feet. The lime mortar in the ceiling arches was sifting down in a fine, white shower, dusting the shoulders of the kitchen cooks as they hurried along the passage with sacks of dried peas, barrels of salt pork, and bundles of dry kindling.
Through the floor, the acoustic tubes hummed with that rhythmic, terrible vibration—the sound of black-glass tables multiplying in the dark. Even though the Last Guest was desperately trying to mind its boundaries, keeping its spectral cutlery tucked away from the children’s dormitory above, the sheer, crushing mass of eight thousand soldiers staring at the burning ridge outside continued to warp the mountain around it.
“We have to clear the inner ring,” Noll said, his stone voice cutting through the clatter of carts and iron wheelbarrows.
Beside him stood Sella Rusk, Sergeant Berr, and Edren Dene. Sella had her hair bound up in a leather thong, her sleeves rolled to the elbows, while Berr stood leaning on a notched halberd shaft, his hollow eye sockets watching the ceiling seams with professional scrutiny. Edren was leaning on his heavy miner’s pickaxe, coughing softly into a wool…
