The brass pulpit rose on four telescoping pillars of cold-rolled steel. It lifted Arch-Heresiarch Malakor thirty feet above the churning shuttles of the Loom.
Down on the iron gangway, Ren Vale stood with his boots braced against the punched holes in deck. everyone could feel the scent of un-burned minutes. A sweet, cloying fragrance like honeyed wax left to scorch in an iron pan. Above them, the suspended iron cage groaned as the stolen shard of the Seventh Mirror turned upon its gimbal, casting distorted silver reflections across the dark rock ceiling.
“You look at this machine with a clerk’s suspicion, Ren Vale,” Malakor said. His voice, channeled through the fluted brass horns along the roof, carried no fury. It held the patient, sorrowful rhythm of an old teacher speaking to an unruly student across an ink-stained desk. “You see gears, gold-silver metal needles, and lead channels. Your little keeper’s brain right away searches for the margin where the tax was stolen.”
“I see an engine powered by stolen cemetery dirt,” Ren answered, keeping his voice level. “I see five hundred glass water tanks filled with the boiled memories of people who never signed your promise.”
“Promise?” Malakor laughed, a dry, rattling rasp that set the amber fluid in his breathing mask vials dancing. “You speak of covenants as though the world itself were a lawful judge. Tell me, boy—who signed the contract that put your mother in the pauper’s pit behind the tannery? Which licensed notary affixed his wax…
