The whir of the diamond wheel was a high, thin needle threading the dark.
Inside the foreman’s cabin, Artificer Ren leaned over the cast-iron treadle lathe, his foot pumping the wooden pedal with steady, clockwork rhythm. The twelve-inch brass lap, charged with olive oil and heavy-duty diamond dust, spun at three thousand turns a minute, throwing a fine, pale mist of oil into the air. In his scarred left hand, clamped into a copper dop-stick, the four-inch mammoth bone awl touched the spinning wheel.
Zzzzzzz-shk.
Every contact produced a shower of cold, violet sparks. The Artificer’s diamond loupes were clicked down. His breath held was silent, his fingers adjusting the index gear by fractions of a degree.
Across the room, sitting on a low pine chest, Ren Vale sat motionless, breathing through his teeth.
His left arm remained bound tightly across his chest in the rigid ram’s-horn back shell. The acute, blinding agony of the shattered collar bone had been absorbed into Brother Ren’s spiritual vessel. But the physical reality of his anatomy was an unbending master. Ren lifted his chin or swelled his chest muscle. Then, the four jagged quartz fragments inside his shoulder pressed against his upper ribs like sharp cobblestones sewn beneath his skin.
