Calculations clicked into place behind Mireira's ribs. They had not arrived to negotiate or imprison; their purpose was erasure. Zareto spat a dry rasp. “Outdated? You send clerks to claim what you cannot fathom.” His fingers bit into the calfskin binding of the Serpent’s Coil ledger. The Crown prelate disregarded him, turning pale eyes toward Mireira. “Rocanto. Return to your station with your skull intact. We have no quarrel with an archivist, only with the blight beside you.” “Leniency means a cage with softer hay,” Mireira said. She shifted a half-pace closer to Zareto, watching the prelate's mouth tighten. “I choose my own ledger.” “Then you choose the furnace,” the prelate said, lifting an iron-gloved hand. The vanguard of grafted hounds—plated in corroded boiler iron and stitched together with sinew—crept forward, silent on mismatched paws. “Tarnis!” Mireira snapped, pointing toward the ceiling. The copper-plated avian darted into the web of soot-caked rafters. Zareto tracked her with a predatory tilt of his head. “You have a scheme,” he muttered beneath the scrape of claws on stone. Steam whistled from his cracked chest plate, but her crude solder held. “Always,” she replied, yanking a rust-caked brass sconce downward. Stone ground against stone. A tier of flagstones collapsed into a cellar pit, uncovering rotating industrial shears from the quarry's early days. Two iron-plated beasts plunged straight into the whirling teeth, crushed into spray and brass scrap. The prelate did not flinch. “A crude mechanism, Mireira.” He signaled with a crooked finger, and another pack of construct hounds poured over the threshold, fanning out across the rubble to skirt the trench. “Zareto, the copper floor studs along the gallery pillars!” Mireira called out. “They ground the auxiliary current!” He vaulted across broken masonry, a shadow of soot and piston-driven steel. His damaged forearm spat sparks with every vault, yet struck the recessed switch cleanly. Violet arcs lashed through the gallery flagstones. The nearest constructs locked in mid-leap, plating smoking as current fried their synthetic nervous systems. The magistrate bared his teeth. “Tricks from a dying dog. Zareto Galtis, by the Crown's mandate, your license is revoked.” He leveled a rune-etched gauntlet, a high-frequency acoustic whine screeching from its palm. “Acoustic cipher Omega-Null-Seven. Purge augmented marrow. Sever internal conduits.” The screech pierced the hall, rattling the glass in the high clerestory windows. Zareto dropped to one knee, fingers clawing at his sternum while his gears seized in harsh dissonance. “Pompous idiot,” Mireira said, stepping past a pile of collapsed mortar. “You think he still runs on royal schematics?” She caught the magistrate's stare. “During his field repair, I rewrote the valve channels.” The magistrate sneered. “You spliced biomechanic neuro-cables? A scribbler lacks the skill.” “I have cataloged every gear in him,” she answered. “Your cipher routes directly into his reserve boiler. You just stoked his furnace.” The gauntlet's whine crested. Metal groaned as silver-alloy coils burst from Zareto's rib plating, whipping through the haze like striking adders. His pupils contracted around a harsh crimson glow. The pressure bypass she had recalibrated vented directly into his synthetic musculature, surging with boiler steam. Zareto bared sharp teeth. “You dare rattle your keys at me!” He blurred forward across the flagstones. His silver cables impaled three beasts before lashing into the magistrate's breastplate, punching through filigree and breastbone. The man choked on bile as Zareto's claw clamped his throat, hoisting him off the ground. “Scrap,” Zareto whispered. With a single torque of his wrist, cartilage crushed beneath his fingers, tearing the magistrate's head clear of his neck. Black, alchemically treated blood splattered across the ruined floor. Without their handler, the surviving mechanical beasts twitched and collapsed into inert heaps. The escort soldiers threw down their halberds and fled through the breached doors, boots splashing into the Ovesta mud. Silence reclaimed the quarry hall, broken only by cooling copper and sluggish drips of oil. Zareto tossed the severed skull aside, letting it roll across the stone. The metal filaments pulled back into his chest, but his gaze remained locked on Mireira, narrow and unhinged. Reaching beneath his leather mantle, he drew out a thick choker of silver and polished horn, lined with spinal insertion needles. He took one measured step toward her, then another. “Are you leaving me again?”

The Archivist's War