The high-pressure drills began their work three minutes before midnight, not with an explosion, but with a high-pitched, grinding shaking that set every tooth in Ren Vale’s jaw to aching.
Through the solid limestone ceiling of Sub-Basement Twelve, three diamond-toothed heavy-duty coring bits—each six inches in width and powered by high-pressure steam boilers from the upper avenues—punched through four feet of living stone with the relentless, screaming torque of iron locusts. The sound was ear-splitting. It filled the vaulted bindery with a bone-jarring rattle that turned the fine animal fat dust in the air into a shimmering fog.
A three-ton block of dressed limestone snapped along its mortar joints, plummeting from the central archway. It smashed into the long oak bookbinding table with the bone-shaking force of an iron bomb, splintering the seasoned timber into thousands of jagged laths and sending drying racks, clay inkpots, and iron scrapers hurtling across the flat stone slabs.
Through the ragged hole in the ceiling poured blinding, white-hot magnesium flares, with the choking, rotten-egg reek of heavy-duty propellant and boiling machine grease.
“Suppress the cellar!” a voice bellowed through the breach, amplified by a brass megaphone with the clear, metal timbre of a judge-sergeant. “Deploy the burning acid mortars! Wash the stones with lye! Leave no scrap of unburned thick parchment intact!”
