In the dry writing hall of Entry hall 335, the smell of burnt bile and scorched zinc hung heavy in the air.
Qiao Ming sat at his backup workbench, a thick slab of planed elm-wood mounted on granite piers. Before him, arranged in neat rows on a lead-lined tray, were seven glass vials captured from the abandoned satchels of the outer sect raiders. The glass was thick, greenish-black, and etched with the snake-like seal of the Obsidian Conclave—the most ruthless of the sky factions that had ruled the dying outer heavens.
He wore his heavy oilskin apron and thick gauntlets of greased shark-skin leather. A water mapper knew that handling unknown reagents without protective barriers was a form of suicide. The alchemists of the Conclave did not brew medicines. They compounded solvents designed to dissolve the deepest laws of matter.
He picked up the first vial with a pair of long bronze tongs. The liquid inside was a dense, oily syrup of rainbow-bright purple, swirling with tiny motes of golden light that rose and fell like dying embers.
He unstoppered the vial using a horn wrench. A thin wisp of yellow vapor curled from the neck, carrying a sharp, choking stench of sulfur and boiled copper that made his eyes water behind his beryl goggles.
