The golden ledger lines that held the Man Who Returned in place didn’t snap all at once.
They dissolved one by one, like threads of spun sugar melting under a slow, scalding drip of boiling water. Every two hours of sanctum time, another dark rock arch would groan under spirit torque and collapse into a heap of pale grey ash as the headsman step by step traced Vane’s liens to their legal roots, shearing the old family deeds with his jagged mirror-blade.
By the eighteenth hour, only twenty paces separated the headsman from the central dais.
High above the silver floor, perched on a gold-silver metal crossbeam fifteen feet in the air, Ren-the-Cinder was crouched like a cornered raccoon. His scavenged leather duster, patched with scraps of oiled canvas and wolf pelt, was drawn tightly around his thin shoulders. His grey dust-hood was pulled low. He cast deep shadow over everything except his twitching mouth and wide, hyperactive grey eyes. In his right hand, the heavy iron ring holding sixteen mismatched brass skeleton keys rattled with the wild, staccato rhythm of a dying woodpecker.
“He’s through the sixth cordon,” Cinder whispered. His voice shook so wildly his teeth clicked together. “He’s three paces from the southern strut. In nine seconds, he’s going to step on the squeezing seam and drop the whole ceiling on our heads.”
