The iron under Ren Vale’s knees was hot enough to fry lard.
He knelt upon the curving spine of the main steam pipe hub, sixty feet above the boiling melted rock waste floor. He felt the blistering metal radiate through his woolen trousers. Beneath the three-inch cast iron, thirty million un-lived lives from the drowned Thalassocracy of Ouros roared like an underground hurricane. It pounded against the casing with wild, rhythmic hammers of tightly packed chronological steam.
Ren took a deep breath, coughing as copper vapor and sulfuric fumes scorched his lung tubes. His silver-streaked hair fell forward, damp with greasy sweat, sticking to the dark rings beneath his eyes. He set his satchel down upon the iron plating, the thick leather sizzling where it touched the rivets.
“Hold the ink-horn,” Ren commanded, not looking back.
Vane Vale crawled out along the narrow girder, his tailored velvet coat bunched awkwardly around his shoulders. His gold-trimmed counting frame was clenched between his teeth. He reached the curved crown of the dome, planted his knees gingerly on either side of the seam. Then he spat the counting frame into his gloved palm.
“I’m holding an open bottle of dark oak-ink over a three-hundred-foot cooking pot of liquid bronze,” Vane hissed, unscrewing the horn stopper with trembling fingers. “If you drop me into that slurry, little brother, my ghost will spend eternity contesting your estate.”
