Through the swirling silver mist that poured from the shattered bronze throat of the Viewing Plate, Jon Hale walked across the flooded granite floor of the Re-Claim Chamber and knelt beside the fallen Ash Host engineer.
The hot runoff lapped over the tops of Jon’s leather boots, smelling of boiled rust, sulfur, and wet limestone. Beneath his knees, the dressed stone flagstones no longer vibrated with the high, singing pitch of the temporal governor; they shook instead with the coarse, heavy thudding of an un-governed steam jacket boiling its last minute of river water against cracked firebrick.
Jon reached out with his left hand—the hand marked with the ink-stained ring of the Troop Orders on his thumb, the tanned hide ring of Ben Rill’s Leather Ledger on his index, the crimson glass ring of Cael’s Blood Vial on his middle finger, the ivory enamel ring of Nell’s Baby Tooth on his ring finger, and the verdigris ring of the Bronze Gate Fitting on his pinky—and pressed two fingers gently against the hollow of the engineer’s scorched neck.
There was no pulse beneath the blistered skin.
The direct concussive blast of superheated steam and shattered quartz crystal from the ruptured viewing aperture had stopped the man’s heart before his back ever struck the flagstones. His bald scalp and heavy gray eyebrows were beaded with condensing water, his leather tool-apron split down the breastbone where the chisel-end of his own pry-bar had been driven back against his ribs, and his calloused right…
