Malphas leaned against the six-foot iron winding crank, and the world groaned.
With a heavy, ringing clack, the gear catch drum of the Great Paradox Spindle advanced another tooth. The thirty-foot monolith shivered, its fluted black gold-silver metal column pulsing with a sickening surge of grey chronological milk. High above, the cosmic tear in the apex dome swelled three arm-lengths wider. He cast shimmering ripples of unwritten star-frost across the black glass floor.
“Tell me, Conservator Vale,” Malphas said, his pale face lit up by the sky aurora swirling in the void above. “What’s the main function of your craft?”
Ren didn’t lower his mammoth ivory awl. His boots shifted two inches on the slick glass. It spread his stance to counter the gravity tug streaming from the reverse-spinning Spindle.
“A Conservator repairs what’s damaged,” Ren answered, his voice low, gravelly, and deliberate. “He stabilizes bindings. He seals degraded thick parchment. He enforces the strength of the material ledger.”
“A sterile description,” Malphas murmured, shaking his bone-white head with a thin, sorrowful smile. “An office answer for an office heart. Let me give you the true definition: a Conservator is a prison guard of circumstance. You exist to tell the weeping, the impoverished. The maimed that their suffering has been registered, filed, and declared permanent.”
