The oak timbers of the abandoned ore-barges were eight inches thick, seasoned by sixty years of mountain frost until they were hard as stone-hard bone.
Ren Prime knelt upon the broad deck of the lead barge, his frieze coat discarded. His lambskin apron tied was tight over his wool tunic. His left knee throbbed with dull, persistent fire. But he ignored it, sitting cross-legged on the rough planks with a three-gallon pig-iron pot of star-fallen void-ink resting between his shins.
Beside him, Apostate Ren dipped a long, flat horsehair brush into the black slurry.
“The vector must be uniform,” the Astrologer instructed, his raspy voice steady as he traced a two-foot chalk circle around the main mast-step. “If the negative-mass slope varies by more than three percent between bow and stern, the balance point will invert. The vessel will capsize the moment it leaves the ground, dumping sixty tons of oak and three hundred passengers into the volcano bowl.”
Ren Prime drew his carved mammoth ivory awl from its sheath.
He uncorked the silver tiny blood vessel pool in the handle, allowing three drops of his own careful mana—his specialized, contract-auditing essence—to bleed down the silver wire into the horsehair brush.
