At two hours past midnight, the fog rolled off the High Terraces of Khorat like cold animal fat, smothering the narrow viaducts and flying stone props in a dense, rotten-egg shroud.
Ren Vale stood upon the narrow stone narrow high walkway of the Old Aqueduct, seventy feet above the diplomatic quarter. He wore a heavy wool watch-coat over his apprentice’s apron, the collar turned high against the biting mountain wind that whipped down from the snow-capped summit of Mount Khorat. In his right hand, he held his ivory bone awl. He felt the reassuring coolness of the fossil mammoth tooth against his calloused palm. Beneath his ribs, pressed flat against his breastbone, the Speculum of Forfeited Paths felt like a slab of cold iron, ticking with the faint, irregular deep ring of the eight divergent souls bound to its gold-silver metal frame.
Beside him stood Scribe Ren. The older forger leaned his elbows against the pitted granite stone railing. He peeked through his wire-rimmed bifocals at the glowing spires across the deep gap. He looked unimpressed by the majestic skyline, his mouth curled into the sour, permanent grimace of a man whose main relationship with the world was pointing out flaws in other people’s penmanship.
