The workshop smelled like hot metal and cold rain, which should not have been possible in the same room, but it always was here.
I noticed the small things first. That was not a decision. It had simply become the way I saw a room—the crooked hinge on the far cabinet, the faint hiss of a pressure line somewhere behind the wall, the exact rhythm of a hammer strike that told me whether the man swinging it knew what he was doing. Right now, he did not. Three benches down, one of Izzy's repair men was overtightening a piston seal, and I could hear it complain before he even noticed.
Zeke did not hear any of it. He never did. He stood near the door with Michaelangelo resting against his shoulder, arms crossed, looking like a man waiting for permission to be bored.
"You're doing that thing again," he said.
"What thing."
"Listening to the room instead of the people in it."
I did not answer. My case sat against my leg, closed and latched. I kept my hand near the handle without meaning to. It had become a habit, and I had not managed to unlearn it.
Izzy's voice cut through the noise before I could think about that any further.
"If it's not seated properly, take it apart again," she said. "I am not signing off on a gauntlet that will blow a seal on someone's arm."
Zeke finally looked interested.
"Bishop's Gauntlet?"
"The one from the east district," Izzy said. "Half the piston housing was reassembled by someone who has clearly never met a piston."
I looked past her to the bench, where the gauntlet lay open in pieces—brass housing, iron handplate, wrist bracket, pressure line, return spring. My eyes went there the way they always did with anything mechanical, cataloguing before I could stop myself. Left seal new but seated unevenly. Return spring loose by half a turn. Wrist bracket recently replaced.
I said nothing.
The workshop was longer than it looked from outside. The front benches held ordinary repairs—buckles, hinges, lamps, snapped handles. The rear benches held Church work beneath oilcloth and locked drawers. Along the side wall, an empty maintenance table stood beneath a rack of clean tools.
Honoria's bench.
I knew it from the way everything around it had been kept exact. The clamps were closed. The leather top was wiped down. No oil cloth. No opened kit. No pressure residue. No fine brass filings. No rolled wire. No lancet parts.
Nothing.
Zeke saw where I was looking.
"Still clean," he said.
"It has been clean all morning," Izzy replied.
"So she didn't come."
"No."
"And Yael?"
Izzy did turn then. "If Yael had come through this room, I would know."
That was the end of that.
Zeke shifted Michaelangelo higher on his shoulder. "Matthias said constables checked the workshop."
"They walked through the front, looked at the benches, and succeeded only in reminding me that uniforms do not improve eyesight."
One of the repair men lowered his gaze very quickly. He was not smiling, but he looked as if he had almost made that mistake.
Izzy opened the inspection ledger with two fingers and tapped a line without looking down.
"I counted every person who entered after first bell. I checked the requisition slate twice. I opened the rear stores myself. Sister Mace did not come here. Her partner did not come here. Yael did not come here. If anyone tells Canon Vale otherwise, that person is either lying or blind."
Zeke grunted. "He'll enjoy hearing that."
"I am not employed to improve his temper."
I stepped closer to Honoria's bench. I did not touch it. I only looked.
Prudence had been right to ask about the workshop. If Honoria had truly taken Yael for maintenance, this was where it would have come. There were only a few places in London where a field weapon could be opened safely, and fewer still where someone like Honoria would trust the hands in the room.
There was nothing here to support that story.
Nothing at all.
"Rear door?" Zeke asked.
"Bolted until the delivery wagon came," Izzy said. "I opened it myself."
"Anyone use it after?"
"No."
I crouched to look at the lower hinge. Damp dust. Wheel marks from the delivery crate. No fresh drag. No deep heel scrape. No sign that anything heavy had been taken through in a hurry.
When I straightened, Izzy was watching me.
"Well?" she asked.
"No one moved a weapon bench through there," I said. "Not today."
Zeke glanced at me. "You say that like you've done it before."
"I've carried things."
He looked at the case by my leg.
I looked back at the bench.
Izzy closed the ledger. "Caleb."
I looked up.
"Tell him what you see."
I moved to the bench where the gauntlet lay open. The repair men shifted aside. One smelled of wet wool and coal soap. Another had oil under his nails thick enough to varnish wood.
I pointed without touching. "The left seal has been replaced, but not trimmed cleanly. If pressure rises too fast, it will catch along the edge. The spring is loose by half a turn. Not enough to fail immediately. Enough to waste force. And the wrist bracket is new."
Izzy nodded once.
"Why is the wrist bracket new?" she asked the nearest man.
The repair man swallowed. "The original pin was cracked, miss."
"And did you write that down?"
He did not answer.
Izzy tapped the blank space in the ledger.
"No," she said. "You did not."
Zeke sighed toward the rafters. "I almost miss monsters."
"You are on a monster hunt," Izzy said.
"No, this is administration wearing an axe."
"It suits you."
I looked back at the gauntlet.
It was a brutal thing. No elegance in it. No hidden cleverness. Just iron, pressure, and the promise that whatever stood in front of it would not remain shaped the same afterward. The piston housing sat along the forearm like a piece of boilerwork riveted to bone.
I should not have wanted to touch it.
I did.
That was the problem.
I folded my hands behind my back.
Zeke noticed. He noticed more than people thought. He simply preferred not to act like it unless he had to.
"That one fit you?" he asked.
I knew which one he meant.
"No."
"You sure?"
"Yes."
"Because you keep carrying it like it might answer questions."
"It doesn't."
"That was not the question."
Izzy shut the ledger.
"We are not discussing mysterious luggage in front of men who cannot be trusted with a file."
The repair men became very interested in their own boots.
A sound rang from somewhere above us.
Not the hour bell. Not the gate bell. Just one uncertain strike, then silence.
Every head in the room turned.
The repair man by the shutter frowned. "What was—"
Something hit the roof.
It struck hard enough to shake dust from the beams, then skittered across the timbers above us with a sound too quick and too many-footed to belong to any bird I had ever heard.
Nobody moved.
Then something small struck the upper pane of the side window from outside.
A dark smear dragged down the glass.
Black-gold.
The nearest repair man made a noise in his throat that did not become a word.
The second impact came from the rear of the workshop.
Then a scream from the yard.
Zeke had Michaelangelo in both hands before the echo died. He did not look dramatic doing it. He only looked awake.
Izzy snatched the oilcloth off the open bench. "Bolt the front."
The repair men stood still.
She looked at them.
They moved.
One ran for the front door. Another reached for the shutter bar. The third stood rooted long enough that Zeke said, "If you're going to faint, do it after you've made yourself useful," and that finally sent him stumbling toward the rear wall.
I set my case on the bench beside the gauntlet.
Not open.
Just there.
The roof gave a long, dry creak. Whatever was above us crossed from one end of the workshop to the other too quickly for a man.
Izzy dragged the gauntlet body toward her. "Seal wrench."
I handed it to her before she finished speaking.
She did not thank me. She only said, "Hold the wrist housing."
I did.
The metal was warm from the bench. She tightened the bracket, checked the piston line, then thrust the assembly back toward me.
"Pressure gauge."
I read it automatically. "Just under full."
"Again."
I tapped the glass with my fingernail and watched the needle settle. "Holding. No leak at the feed."
"Left seal?"
I ran my thumb along the trimmed edge and felt the faint drag where the cut had not been cleaned properly.
"It will hold for short discharge," I said.
"How short."
"Depends how hard I hit."
Zeke looked at me.
Izzy looked at me.
I wished very much that I had not answered that honestly.
A crash from the rear shutter solved the problem for me. Something struck it once, twice, then began scraping down the wood with many hard quick sounds.
The repair man nearest it yelped and leaped backward.
Izzy took the gauntlet from me, checked the locking teeth, then thrust it back into my hands.
"Can you wear it?" she asked.
"Yes."
"Can you use it?"
I should have said no.
Instead I said, "Enough."
Zeke gave a short laugh with no amusement in it. "That is not a reassuring answer."
"There are no reassuring people in this room," Izzy said. "Left arm."
I set the case down and slid my arm into the gauntlet. The inner straps were still warm. Izzy cinched the wrist hard enough to hurt, then fastened the forearm catch.
The weight settled at once. Heavy, but balanced. The pressure line gave a faint living thrum against the brace.
It felt different from the thing in my case.
Blunter. Cruder. Honest.
No hidden line. No wire. No choices beyond impact.
For a moment I was back in the dark under Saint Aldric's with stone, salt, and something moving where it should not have been.
I shut that thought out.
The front bolt slammed into place.
The rear shutter burst inward.
The first thing through the gap landed on all fours and unfolded wrong.
It was child-sized only in scale. Its limbs were too long. Its elbows bent where they should not. Its skin was ash-grey and stretched tight over a ribcage that moved as if too many things were trying to breathe inside it. Its mouth opened wider than the rest of its face allowed. Black stitch-lines ran down its throat and vanished beneath its collarbone like thread worked through wet cloth.
The repair man nearest it screamed.
Zeke stepped between them.
Michaelangelo opened with a metallic snap.
The creature gathered itself to spring.
Something else struck the roof above us.
Then another.
Then another.
I tightened my hand inside the gauntlet and heard the pressure line whisper against my arm.
The thing in front of us opened its mouth wider.
Zeke smiled.
Not pleasantly.
And then it jumped.