The Ghol Flesh-Exchange groaned under the weight of iron and offal. Drevik stood waist-deep in the churning sludge of the main arterial drain, tallow and curdled venous discharge coating his oilcloth waders. Steam slick with rendered fat choked the vaulted stone ceilings, condensing into lardaceous beads that dripped steadily onto the flags below. Through the soles of his boots, the thrum of overhead hydraulic saws vibrated into his shins. His lips shaped the old litany of the Crane—three syllables for carrion, three for release—words meant for an open sky, wasted against the sluice gate.
Overhead, a series of gleaming steel hooks, thick as a man’s wrist, glided along oiled tracks. Each hook impaled a thrashing, glistening slab of flesh – a torso, a leg, sometimes an entire, featureless upper half, still twitching with rudimentary nerves. The screams that tore from these living parcels were muffled by the sheer industrial din, reduced to desperate, gurgling whimpers. These were the scions of the upper wards, their limbs swelling and knitting back together as fast as the cleavers notched them. Iron tags wired through their collarbones labeled each cut for the curing vaults.
A small, cylindrical object tumbled from the walkway above, splashing into the drain beside Drevik. He snatched it, the cool metal familiar in his palm. A respiration mask, its tin cartridge dry, struck his thigh. Above, Olenka leaned over the catwalk's grease-caked rail, hair knotted back beneath a brine-soaked cap, tallow smearing her forehead.
“Fasten the straps, carrion-warden,” she shouted down over the grinding gears. “The *Vespertine* clears the harbor at dawn. Zallur is filling every bilge with salted cuts for the Eastern ports.”
Drevik nodded, pulling the mask over his nose and mouth, its coarse fabric doing little to filter the pervasive stench. Out past the breakers, sailors would eat the salted strip-loins to hold off rot, only to sprout extra sets of teeth along their ribs when the graft took hold.
“The rotary blade,” he shouted back, pointing towards a section of the drain where the flow had almost ceased, a viscous, dark mass clinging to the industrial machinery. “It’s clogged. Again.”
Olenka scoffed. “Of course it is. They work the flesh too fast, don’t give the bone-grinders time. If they processed a bit slower, maybe they wouldn’t need you knee-deep in this muck every cycle.” She spat into the sluice. “The overseers are docking rations for every jammed sluice. Clear it before the bell.”
He gave her a curt nod and waded towards the choked rotary. The segmented steel disc spun with an irregular shudder, choked under wet bundles of sinew, slivered ribs, and rubbery skin. Steel groaned against marrow, sending gray spray across the brick lining.
Reaching the obstruction, Drevik braced himself against the slimy wall, his gloved hands plunging into the congealed mass. The warmth was unsettling, a constant reminder of the living origin of the waste. He worked methodically, prying loose chunks of cartilage, snapping sinews that stubbornly clung to the blade’s teeth. The copper stench penetrated his nostrils despite the charcoal tin. Digging his fingers past the shredded gristle, his blunt gloves snagged against something stiff, fibrous, and smooth.
He hauled back hard against the rotor. What came free was an eighteen-inch primary pinion. The quill was dense obsidian, its vane repelling the slurry so that blood rolled off its milk-white barbules like water from oil. It was flight plumage from the sacred Crane—plundered during the great butchery that bought Zallur’s grandfather his first steam-works.
Against his glove, the shaft twitched with a faint, rhythmic throb, leaking a pallid phosphorescence into the dark water. The divine bird's marrow still answered to its old rites, even lodged in an abattoir sewer. If its down and quills were still trapped inside Zallur’s compound, the shattered beast could be pieced together before the *Vespertine* spread the rot across the sea. He slipped the quill beneath his leather apron, pressed flat against his ribs.