The triforium gallery was a narrow stone ledge ninety paces above the nave floor. It ran along the high window row windows like a stone-built shelf in the clouds.
It had been built during the First Epoch for the apprentice boy choristers. But the oak flooring had rotted away decades ago. That left only the bare stone stringers and rusted iron tie-rods that held the cathedral’s southern high window row together.
Ren Vale moved along the stone stringer with slow, clockwork care, his boots wrapped in greased wool. Beneath his black choir cassock, his lambskin apron was strapped tight to his chest, protecting his satchel of careful documents and ink reagents.
In his right hand, he held the Reforged Martyr’s Awl.
The lead sleeve surrounding the mammoth ivory shaft felt cold and heavy in his grip, its surface inscribed with the tiny binding clauses he had etched by the fire bowl light. Every time a wisp of consecrated incense drifted up from the censers eighty feet below, the rotting thick parchment wrap buffered the holy charge. He took in the divine heat wave before it could touch his nervous system.
For the first time since he entered the parish, Ren’s chest was not burning. The Exclusion Axiom was held at bay by the body proxy of Brother Ren’s absorbed suffering.
Behind him crept Vane Vale.
The merchant was carrying three large leather portfolios under his arm, his walking cane strapped across his back like a rifle. Despite the seventy-foot drop into the marble nave below, Vane moved with the hungry agility of a cat stalking a pigeon coop. His dark eyes were locked on the central stone railing.
“The wind draft from the high window row is twelve miles per hour from the northwest,” Vane whispered, his goatee brushing Ren’s ear as he leaned in. “When I release the portfolios, the wind-cutting lift will distribute the sheets in an elliptical pattern across the pews. Every lord between the third row and the cross-hall will receive a direct delivery.”
“Don’t drop them until the choir reaches the second verse of the Offertory,” Ren whispered back. “We need the pipe organ at maximum volume to cover the sound of the hoisting winch.”
At the rear of the gallery, hidden behind the massive bronze bells of the clockwork chime, knelt Brother Ren.
The monk’s raw, unwhitened burlap habit was hidden beneath his black choir cassock. But his circular lead buckler—forged from his melted purification basin—was strapped firmly to his left forearm. His bare, linen-wrapped feet rested on the stone doorstep of an open lancet window. His scarred hands were folded in quiet supplication.
“The worker is on the central lift, Ren,” Brother Ren whispered softly.
Ren looked across the dark expanse of the lantern dome.
Suspended in the air forty feet from the triforium ledge hung the central cradle of the Aeterna Monstrance.
The machine was alive.
Four high-pressure steam pipes ran from the cathedral boiler room into the central pipe hub. It hissed with high-pressure vapor that vented from brass exhaust nozzles along the rim. Inside the ball-shaped core, sixty feet above the high altar, burned an artificial sun. A high-pressure liquid silver-vapor star-fire arc that pulsed with blinding lavender light. It hummed at the concert pitch of pure silver.
Standing upon the Monstrance’s upkeep narrow high walkway, his hand resting on the main hoisting lever, was the Chief Engineer of the Grand Synod. A hunched, elderly deacon named Father Ignatius, wearing leather goggles and heavy asbestos gloves.
“The main running charter is mounted on the rear check hatch,” Ren noted, his eyes narrowing as he spotted the six-inch bronze plate bolted to the boiler housing. “An royal binding seal. Inscribed in dark oak-ink on cured calf thick parchment.”
“And the silver shielding?” Vane asked, his counting frame clicking once beneath his cassock.
“The housing is lined with two inches of consecrated silver sheet to prevent ringing leakage,” Ren said. “Under normal circumstances, an indentured awl would shatter against that ward. But the lead sleeve on my tool will ground the charge through the metal ring.”
Ren looked down at the nave floor.
Below, the congregation was kneeling. The four-story pipe organ in the western gallery roared into life, thousands of cubic feet of high-pressure air pumping through eighty-foot zinc pipes. It shook the ancient limestone foundations with a bone-shaking, low-hum chord that echoed in the marrow of their bones:
DUUUUUUUUUUM.
The boys’ choir began the second verse:
“The light of heaven, the sword of grace,
“No sinful tongue shall see His face...”
“Now, Vane,” Ren said.
Vane Vale smiled—a wide, poisonous, beautiful grin that had once scared merchant cartels from Low-Khorat to the sea.
He stepped to the stone railing, unbuckled the straps of all three leather portfolios. Then he inverted them into the rising draft.
The ascent through the unsafe spiral stairs had taken forty minutes of painful, silent labor.
The stone treads were cracked and slick with calcium slow leak. In three places, the outer wall had pulled away from the stonework, leaving yawning gaps where the freezing winter wind howled in from the snowy bluffs of the Blackwater Gorge. Ren had climbed with his teeth grit. His mammoth bone awl was held tight in his teeth, his bruised left shoulder screaming with every pull.
Now, Ren crouched on the stone stringers of the triforium gallery. He looked across the dark deep gap of the lantern dome.
Beside him, Vane Vale was step by step sorting through the three leather portfolios, his manicured fingers separating the careful transcripts into three distinct bundles labeled with red drafting chalk.
“Bundle One,” Vane whispered, his voice crisp with skilled satisfaction. “The forged death certificates of the thirty-two water tank children, cross-referenced with Malachai’s private bank deposits in the Iron Bank. To be delivered directly into the lap of Lord Corvin of House Malakor, whose family paid eighteen thousand sovereigns for the rights to Elspeth’s marrow.”
Vane picked up the second bundle, his counting frame clicking twice.
“Bundle Two: The fraudulent Plenary Indulgence bonds issued to the northern barons, showing the six-percent compound interest rate that legally forecloses upon their old family estates in Fort Karst. That goes to Baroness Vane and the guard post commanders.”
“And the third bundle?” Ren asked, adjusting his black choir cowl.
“The master forced payout index,” Vane purred, his eyes flashing behind his monocle. “An itemized schedule proving that the Grand Synod owes twelve million sovereigns to the Crown, eight million to the Iron Bank, and four million to local merchant guilds, against liquid assets of less than three hundred thousand copper pieces. When this hits the marble floor, Ren, it will trigger an immediate, total run on the cathedral treasury. The congregation will dismantle that altar with their bare hands looking for their gold.”
Brother Ren stepped to the edge of the stone stringer, his bare, linen-wrapped feet gripping the narrow ledge with miraculous balance. He looked across the eighty-foot void at the dropping Monstrance.
“The worker is Deacon Ignatius,” the monk murmured, his silver-flecked eyes narrowing through the incense haze. “He was my novice master in the alternate cloisters. A man who loved steam engines more than human souls. When the Monstrance drops into the focal plane, he will open the liquid silver valves. You have ninety seconds to sever the thick parchment charter before the core reaches critical ringing heat.”
Ren checked the lead sleeve on his reforged awl. The cold metal sat heavy in his palm, the rotting thick parchment wrap dry and smooth.
“Justin is in position at the choir gate,” Ren said. “Vane. Release the portfolios.”
Ren reached out with his gloved hand. He felt the massive iron balance weight cable that held the Aeterna Monstrance suspended in the dome.
The steel wire was three inches thick, greased with heavy animal fat to prevent friction against the bronze pulley wheels. But through the metal, Ren could feel the terrifying, high-hum shaking of the machine’s internal boiler.
“Twelve sea-weights of steam pressure,” Ren noted, his careful eye analyzing the clockwork tolerances. “And the safety valves have been wired shut with baling wire. Ignatius bypassed the pressure relief to maximize the star-fire output. If the ringing feedback spikes even ten percent, the boiler seams will rip like rotten canvas.”
“An unconscionable rule-break of basic boiler safety,” Vane commented. He shook his head with genuine skilled offense. “No approved town boiler checker would approve this installation without thirty distinct bribes. A single burst chimney pipe will fill this dome with white-hot steam at four hundred degrees.”
Brother Ren knelt beside the stone railing. His lead buckler strapped was tight, his silver-flecked eyes watching the congregation below.
“The people don’t know, Vane,” the monk whispered softly. “They sit in their velvet coats, singing their hymns, believing the church is an iron roof over their heads. They don’t know that the roof is made of burning pitch.”
“Then we’re performing a civic service by pulling the fire alarm,” Vane snapped back. He lifted the first portfolio of audit sheets onto the stone railing. “Justin is at the cross-hall gate. The choirboys are finishing the first verse. Ren... Give the word.”
Ren drew his Reforged Martyr’s Awl, feeling the cold lead sleeve hum against his palm. “Drop the ledgers, Vane.”