“I know exactly what illegal experiments you are hiding in these shadows, Vessera.”
Vessera tore her fingers from the pulsing Glass-Walker heart, leaving a phantom vibration humming against her calluses. Korien Vast stood inches away, smelling of distilled wintergreen and wet wool, his smirk sharp enough to draw blood. He knew. Of course he knew.
“Your patronage is rat poison, Vast,” she said, forcing her voice level while bile coated the back of her tongue. Behind the workbench, Pip shifted on his stool, his bare feet scuffing the flagstones as he eyed the purse. His sick sister was the sole reason Vessera did not fling the glistening lump straight into Korien’s teeth.
Korien merely chuckled, a sound like dry leaves skittering across cobblestones. “Perhaps. But clean cistern water will not cure your runner, will it? Nor will it parse the matrices woven into this prize.” He pointed a gloved finger at the core. “Your cellar glass cannot resolve the binding layers. You need the Great Refraction-Loom at the Alabaster academy.”
The academy. The site of her disgrace, where his forged ledgers had seen her stripped of rank and driven into the lower fog. Yet the Loom was unmatched: three stories of spun prism-glass and brass gearwork designed to untangle compound transmutations. Sneaking past the gates was reckless, but her cobbled copper alembics lacked the focal depth to expose the core's maker.
“Spare me your charity,” Vessera said, pressing her knuckles flat against the pine bench. “What is your cut, Korien? An indictment of my basement distillations, or the formula you intend to strip from the marrow?”
He straightened, his velvet-trimmed lapels drinking in the yellow gas flame. “Both. Or neither. Call it an appetite to watch your hands at a proper console again.” He tossed a lead-weighted purse onto her table; coins groaned against the scarred timber. “A stipend. The high halls. Midnight.”
With a measured tip of his chin, Korien backed into the street fog, leaving her with the thrumming valve, the spilled coin, and the salt of swallowed rage.
Hours later, the Shroud-Borough lived up to its name. A thick, grey mist clung to the cobblestones, muffling the usual clamor of the city. Vessera, cloaked and hooded, moved like a wraith, the Glass-Walker heart a cold weight in a lead-lined pouch tucked deep within her satchel. The Alabaster academy reared out of the vapor like an ivory ribcage, its towering colonnades cut from pale stone that rejected the soot of the foundries. Iron portcullises barred the lower arches, and blue sulfur lanterns burned in wire cages along the parapet.
She worked a rusted iron key into the coal chute behind the botanical annex. Inside, the halls smelled of nitric acid and cold chalk, an icy breath that dried the damp wool of her cloak. The vaulted corridors sat empty, save for the blue grease lamps guttering every twenty paces.
She slipped into the deep vaults beneath the west quad, where the Refraction-Loom filled a vaulted hall once reserved for furnace testing. A towering lattice of brass arms hung over a quartz slab, anchored by weighted counter-pulleys. She set the Glass-Walker core upon the stone. When she cranked the dynamo, gears clicked into alignment, and split beams of violet lantern-light pierced the glass specimen, tracing the synthetic marrow.
Phosphor dials along the armature spun, needle-pointers ticking across etched slate scales. The ratios matched no wild taint; someone had treated the core with quicksilver binders and refined vitriol to force the crystalline expansion. She reached toward the primary aperture dial to isolate the catalyst.
“Look what crept out of the culvert.”
Boot-heels clicked on flagstones. Cynia Verris stood beneath the threshold arch in pleated wool robes, flanked by two junior assistants carrying slate clipboards.
“Still scrounging, Vessera?” Cynia held her lantern higher, its beam cutting across Vessera's stained cuffs. “I assumed the city guards had shovelled you into a lime pit by now.”
Joric snickered behind his sleeve. “Likely here to scrape lead tailings off the floorboards.”
Vessera’s teeth ground together, but she refused to drop her chin. “The console was open, Cynia. Go back to your sleep-quarters.”
Cynia advanced two paces, her hem rustling against the flagstones. “It is requisitioned space. And your presence beside an uncatalogued biological sample is a criminal breach. One word to the provost's sentries will finish what your expulsion started.”
Vessera reached toward the plinth to snatch the core back, but boots scuffed the threshold behind them.
“You may save your ink, Cynia. Her requisition is funded by my private trust.”
Korien stepped through the archway, his silver-buckled coat unbuttoned, fingers tucked casually into his vest pockets. Cynia’s chin dipped, her arrogant smirk curdling.
“Master Vast,” Cynia muttered, taking a half-step backward. “I was not informed your house held interest here.”
“Entirely exclusive,” Korien said, stopping between the researchers and the plinth. “And it would be tragic if administrative gossip disrupted our audit. By the way, how fares the accounting on your neural-accelerator grant? I understand several ledger pages regarding imported spinal fluid were… misfiled last month.”
Cynia’s throat bobbed. She gripped her clipboard tight against her ribs. “The filings are complete, Master Vast.”
“Naturally. Which means Ms. Hale’s use of this hall is equally unimpeachable. Unless you would prefer the guild comptroller inspect your supply crates before dawn?”
Cynia turned on her heel, catching Joric’s sleeve to haul him along. “Back to the rotunda,” she hissed, and their footsteps faded down the gallery.
Vessera glared at him, nails biting into the leather of her cuffs. He had routed her enemy with three sentences, using the same poisonous ledger-tricks he had once deployed against her.
“Is that your notion of assistance?” she asked, stepping between him and the quartz slab. “Blackmailing the very hounds you run with?”
“Call it protecting collateral,” Korien murmured, stepping closer until the wool of his coat brushed her sleeve. His gloved fingers touched the bend of her wrist, cool leather pressing against her racing pulse. “Besides, Cynia was always a thief of lesser intellect.”
The scent of his cologne filled the narrow space between their chests, tangled with the sulfur tang of the console. She wanted to drive her heel into his instep, but her muscles locked under the steady, calculating weight of his stare.
He dipped his head, his focus dropping to the hollow of her throat.
“Halt! State your purpose!”
A chorus of iron greaves struck the doorway flags. Three sentries in black plate rounded the arch, halberds lowered, their bullseye lanterns flooding the vault in stark, blinding glare.
“Stand clear of the mechanism,” the officer commanded, his breastplate bearing the three-eyed sigil of the provost's guard. His gaze locked onto Vessera. “Hale. You were barred from these grounds on pain of excision.” He signaled to the flankers. “Secure her. Bag the specimen on the stone.”
Before she could reach the plinth, a guard caught her shoulder, spinning her back against a support strut while another ripped the oilcloth satchel from her hip. The officer shook its contents onto the floor: glass pipettes, her silver tweezers, and the parchment ledger containing her field autopsies of the afflicted.
His lip curled into a sneer as he held them aloft. “Well, well, well. Provost Nymm will be very interested in these. He’s ordered your immediate arrest, Vessera.