The armory of the Regional Checker office smelled of whale-oil grease, cold-drawn iron, and powdered sulfur.
For three days following the raid on Elder Qian’s illegal distillation vault, the outer sect had existed in a state of suspended animation. Elder Qian had been placed under house arrest in his mountain villa, his clan stripped of their trading privileges in the southern valley. But to Lin Tao, the political fallout was merely background noise. The meaningless squabbling of monkeys while the tree they lived in slowly rotted at the root.
On the heavy pine workbench in the center of the armory, Lin Tao laid out the gear for their descent into the Primordial Drainage Sump.
Every item had been selected, inspected, and tested with clean, steady care.
He inspected the brass measuring tongs, checking that the jaw tolerances had not shifted from their last fine-tuning in the mining pits. Beside the measuring tongs lay three star-iron drift punches, a pair of hardened shears for cutting lead foil rubber rings. A leather roll containing twelve hardened needles of varying gauges, designed to seat into the micro-ports of Precursor fluid regulators. Each needle had been sharpened against an oilstone until the steel tip could cleanly pierce parchment without tearing the fibers.
