Deacon Vane hurried down the damp cellar stairs, clutching an iron-banded ledger against his ribs.
His felt slippers slipped on the frosted stone treads. When he reached the bottom landing, his breath hitched in his throat.
The floor of the dormant Earth-Fire chamber was split wide open. Shattered gray tiles lay scattered across the frozen earth, and in the center of the pit lay an exposed pipe of thick green brass.
Kaelen Vance sat on an overturned wash tub near the opening, holding a slender bamboo fishing rod across his knees. He tapped the flexible tip of the rod against the raised seal on the brass collar.
“Come take a look, Deacon,” Kaelen said, his voice mild and calm. “Your family has very distinctive taste in plumbing.”
Deacon Vane stepped forward, squinting through the dim lantern light.
His face lost every trace of color. His thin jaw went slack, and the knuckles clutching his ledger turned gray.
On the brass collar, stamped under twenty years of lime and corrosion, sat an obsidian viper coiled around a broken abacus—the private cadet-seal of Magistrate Titus Vane’s bastard son. Beneath the emblem, the etched line read: Lucius Vane — Private Siphon Line 4.
