The lab behind the museum registry smelled of sulfur acid, cedar oil, and twenty years of piled up town dust.
On the zinc-topped studying table lay the five-foot trophy, resting on double-folded wool blankets to prevent the flaking off of its fragile, varnished surface. The crystal vitrine had been set aside. Around the table stood Tomas Reed, Nessa Vale, Captain Sile Rook, and apprentice Olla, their faces lit up by three brass animal fat lamps and a spirit-burner.
Tomas’s left arm was strapped securely in its calfskin brace. The prolonged strain of the descent from Mount Sunder had stiffened the scar tissue along his inner forearm. But the swelling remained subdued under the tight buckled leather. With his good right hand, he guided a four-inch copper spatula along the central joint of the tusk where the two separate walrus teeth had been joined.
“Look at the metal ring seam, Nessa,” Tomas said. He pointed to a hairline fracture in the dark amber patina. “The glue line has crystal-hardened.”
Nessa brought her sight magnifying glass close to the seam. She held a said clearlybrass magnifying arm over the joint.
“It’s not fish glue or hide cement,” Nessa dictated, her metal pen scratching notes onto her survey slate. “It’s refined copal shellac, tinted with lampblack and powdered fossil resin. The two tusks were drilled on a level shipwright’s lathe to a depth of four inches, then joined by a five-eighths-inch threaded wrought-iron dowel. Sile, bring the lodestone.”
