The chalk dust fell like dry snow across the dark rock floor of the boiler vault.
Master Ren stood before the curved iron flank of the dead pressure vessel, his dark scribe’s robe tied back with waxed hemp cords to keep the frayed linen sleeves from trailing in the soot. His hands moved with terrifying, clockwork fluidity. Not the jerky air-powered twitch of Unit Ren’s brass pistons. But the peerless, calligraphic speed of a man who had learned by heart eighty thousand royal rolls in the underground archives of Alexandria-Khorat before burning his voice to ash.
Across twenty square feet of rusted iron plate, a massive building cross-section took shape in razor-sharp white lines.
Mira sat wrapped in her charcoal-wool shawl beside the fire bowl, leaning forward on her wooden stool to watch the diagrams unfold. In her left hand, she held a small clay pot bowl of warmed antimony salve. With slow, deliberate circles, her nimble fingers rubbed the ointment into the smoky quartz of her collarbone. The stone surface drank the oily antimony greedily. It glowed with a soft, rainbow-bright pearlescence that quieted the rhythmic chime inside her chest.
“A walking locomotive,” Mira said, her voice dry as tinder. “And here I thought the Notary Guards were content with iron mauls and brass whistles.”
