The inside of the Great Bronze Crown was a dark, choking cave of green rust, rotting bird guano, and freezing damp. At five hundred and fifty feet above the streets of Crown-Reach, the wind howled through the narrow fancy piercings of the coronet with a piercing, nonstop shriek that sounded like an iron siren. The air inside the dome was thick with packed ammonia and dry sulfur soot, burning the membranes of the throat and bringing reflex tears to the eyes within seconds of entering.
Tomas Reed and Nessa Vale had crawled through the eighteen-inch square service scuttle in the lower bronze skirt. She dragged their heavy gear behind them on tether lines. Four-foot cast-steel socket wrenches, three-pound copper-faced mallets, cold chisels of hardened hard steel, and animal fat torches enclosed in protective wire cages. Every tool was secured to their leather climbing harnesses with braided lanyard cords. At this height, a dropped wrench would speed up to end-post speed before striking the belfry roof, piercing through timber and lead like a cannonball.
The huge crown had been cast seventy years ago in eight massive upright segments—the eight towering fleur-de-lis petals that formed the royal coronet of King Roderick the First. Along the internal joints between each petal ran heavy load-bearing flanges, three inches thick and eight inches wide, drilled to receive sixty-four two-inch cast-bronze through-bolts. Over six decades of driving rains, coal smoke, and nesting pigeons, electric-shock rusting and acid salts had fused the nuts and studs into solid…
