Drevik pressed the obsidian quill flat against his ribs, its faint, warm thrum a counterpoint to the distant grind of the meat-saws. The blood-drains offered no further answers. He slogged through the murk, past the skeletal framework of defunct cleansing machines, their gears choked with dried gristle. The air grew thicker here, smelling less of sewage and more of brine and cured flesh, a scent that prickled the back of his throat. He stepped beneath a dripping stone lintel into the processing halls. Here, the noise of the Ghol Flesh-Exchange was muted, replaced by the rhythmic hiss of steam-powered vacuums and the dull slap of flesh against cold steel. Tiled corridors opened left and right under sputtering mantle lamps that stained the flags jaundice-yellow. Long tables, slick with a fine mist of salt and preservative, stretched into the gloom. Along each bench, lines of skinners and trimmers forced harvested elite-flesh into brine tubs with mechanical precision. Every cut, still twitching with stray impulses, was shoved into canisters before the crimping rigs slammed shut. He spotted Olenka near a stack of empty tins embossed with the sprawling crest of the Zallur dynasty – a bloated crane gorging on an endless serpent. Her movements were sharper, less resigned than the others. She handled a heavy packer's cleaver with a practiced, almost brutal efficiency, trimming fat from a slab of pale, quivering muscle. A faint tremor ran through the flesh as her blade sliced, and a small, delicate finger, severed neatly, rolled onto the table. Without pause, she swept it into a disposal chute with the back of her hand. “Olenka.” Drevik’s voice was a low rasp, competing with the machinery. He moved closer, his eyes scanning the neighboring stations to ensure nobody marked their approach. His boots scraped on the gritted floor. She didn't look up immediately, her attention fixed on her task. “Carrion-warden,” she replied, her tone flat, devoid of warmth. “Still sloshing in the deep end, I see.” The cleaver rose and fell again, separating a segment of bicep from a still-warm shoulder. “The respirator… it bought me time.” He glanced at the stacks of sealed tins, each destined for the *Vespertine*. “Time to find this.” He reached into his apron, his fingers brushing the quill, but did not reveal it. Instead, he pulled out a small, oil-stained parchment, folded tight. It was a crude, but accurate, map of the manor’s original smuggling tunnels, the Gutter-Ways, known only to a few trusted carrion-wardens and even fewer of the manor's old blood. “These channels run under the processing halls, past the lower sumps, and into the service corridors of the upper slaughter-wards.” Olenka finally paused, her eyes, tired and sharp, flicking from the map to his face. A thin line of sweat beaded above her lip. “What do you want, Drevik? A tour?” She made no move to take the map. “Access,” he stated, his voice firm. “To the upper slaughter-wards. Where the *source* is. You know the layout, the shift rotations, the blind spots. I need a way in, past the reinforced doors and the guards.” He held the map out, its edges smudged with dried blood. “This map shows your way clear. It opens into an abandoned discharge conduit emptying into the estuary culvert, far below the harbor. No one would ever think to look there.” Her gaze lingered on the parchment, a flicker of something unreadable in her eyes—not hope, but perhaps a grudging calculation. “The upper wards are fortified, Drevik. They guard the Zallur kin themselves. Why do you even want to be near that horror?” A scream tore through the drone of the conveyor belts. It wasn't the sound of a steam-valve bursting, nor the grinding of a misaligned blade. It was human. All motion ceased. Cutter blades halted mid-stroke as the floor hands turned toward the bench. Thirty paces back, beside a trough piled with untrimmed tissue, a youth in grease-stained linens began to heave. His hands, still clutching a greasy scrap of flesh he’d pilfered, were swelling, distorting. His skin stretched taut, then burst, revealing raw, red muscle that pulsed and expanded with unnatural speed. Tumors erupted across his face, his neck, his chest—each one a grotesque parody of a healing wound, rapidly forming and then over-healing, growing into bulbous, glistening masses. His clothes tore as his body inflated, his screams gurgling as his throat constricted. “He choked down an off-cut from Lord Jaroslav,” someone muttered among the benches. “Just a scrap.” Ozone and singed bristle fouled the draft as two iron-clad sentry dynamos trundled into the gangway. Mechanical arms, ending in glowing incisor-clamps, snapped open. Krost, now a writhing, multi-limbed mass of cancerous growth, bellowed. The patrol units converged, their pincers discharging blinding blue arcs. The scullery boy’s form flared, then collapsed into a pile of charred, steaming ash in seconds. The hall fell dead quiet until the crimping pistons hissed back into motion. Nobody looked toward the iron sentries or the smoking depression left upon the flagstones. Sour fluid surged into Drevik's mouth. This wasn't just about the Crane anymore. This was a plague, a rot that would consume the world from the inside out. He turned to Olenka. “The *Vespertine* leaves tomorrow. That meat, it’s a pestilence. It needs to be stopped. Where is the soul-plumage cloak? The one Zallur wore during the Great Butchery? It’s the key.” Olenka’s jaw tightened as she surveyed the rows of canisters and the trimmers returning to their blades. “The cloak,” she began, her voice barely above a whisper, “it doesn’t exist as one piece anymore. After the Margrave grew… beyond his original form… he had it divided. Each of his three legitimate heirs received a section. A symbol of their inheritance, he called it. Their ‘soul-anchor’ to the family’s eternal prosperity.” She gestured vaguely towards the ceiling. “Lord Jaroslav, the eldest, is harvested in the Chronos Sector, for his vitality. Lady Bronya, in the Sanguine Vaults, for her resilience. And Volkov, the youngest… his sector, the Ossuary-Ward, is where they extract the raw regenerative marrow. Each is fortified. Each is a fortified abattoir unto itself.” “Three heirs,” Drevik said. “Three separate keeps.” He looked at the sealed tins, then at Olenka. “Where do I start?”

The Flesh-Packer's Bargain