Unlike the Wild Bridge that was brimming with cold and overgrown vegetation, separating Blightmarch from Umbracross, the Ember Bridge that separated Ironwych from Umbracross sweated like a fever.
Maeve wasn’t sure which bridge she found more unsettling.
Chains arched overhead in sagging catenaries, each link furred with old rust. Abandoned gas lanterns lined the rails in a procession of wounded saints. A few of them still clung to life with ember-flickers, coughing light onto the soot-streaked plates, and steam vents around the bridge exhaled in damp intervals, slicking the walkway with condensation that made every step treacherous. The black river beneath wasn’t too soothing to look at, either—rotten wood tangled with ribbed pipes, warped grates, and other scrap tal junk floated on the black water, making it probably physically impossible for anyone to swim in it.
The people crossing the bridge early in the morning wore their ward on their faces. Blightmarch’s masks were typically softer, but here, everyone wore heavy tal masks with fogged panes and silver filters. Their coats were double-layered, oiled, and buckled to the wrists. It was almost like everyone was expecting a fight at any given ti, and it just didn’t sit well with her.
Of course, Maeve kept pace because her ankle chain demanded it. Gael was speed-walking across the bridge, his cane ticking a rude trono.
“Why are we in such a hurry?” she asked.
“Because we’re late.”
“You’re late,” she corrected. “You drank too much and refused to wake up. Next ti, I’ll shoot you with my blood cannon.”
“Heh. But, like, we still gotta hurry. Pick it up. If we’re late, we’re gonna have to bash a few skulls in just to get what we want, and I don’t wanna—hic—throw up mid-fight.”
She only clicked her tongue. “And where are we hurrying to?
He didn’t answer. Classic.
The end of the Ember Bridge widened once they crossed the black river, and heat imdiately breathed at them. Ironwych, intimidating in na already, lood like a wall of anvils and elbows. Colossal buildings were shouldered on girders, windows were latticed like ribcages, and smokestacks coughed out columns of pure black chemicals everywhere she turned to look. Even at eight in the morning, the air was already a hot furnace, and funnily enough—unlike Blightmarch, where sunlight and moonlight were constantly tinted green—the sunlight here was tinted grey.
They stepped off the bridge and into the Eastern Ward of Steel.
Unlike Blightmarch as well, Ironwych offered nothing soft. Not a single tree threaded a seam. The streets ran between colossal tal buildings like veins cut into a giant. Decks, gantries, and grated platforms zigzagged overhead, while valves and pipes ran along every wall like vines in Blightmarch. The air, too, wasn’t exempt from the tal. It tasted brassy even through her mask, and she imdiately began to miss the clean, fresh air in the clinic.
“Having fun already?” Gael teased.
She shot him a murderous look as she had her first coughing fit, hands fumbling with the dials on her mask to strengthen the filters.
As they walked deeper into the ward, more people started pushing minecarts around them two-handed, backs bowed, masked mouths hissing through filters. Crates of ore rattled in the carts, while even more carts zipped along thick tal cables overhead, all headed away from the sa direction. Her eyes tracked the rails and the cables forward, and there she saw them: black mountains gnawing the horizon like jagged teeth in the near distance, marking the far eastern end of the eastern ward.
Reading her mind, Gael imdiately lifted his cane and pointed at the mountains. “Eighty percent of Ironwych folk work in the mines or in mine-related industries, and those are the Grand Ironwych Mines. Most of Bharncair’s tals co out of those mountains. Vharnveil’s too. tal’s the absolute cheapest thing you can buy here.”
“Even cheaper than fresh air?” she muttered.
“Fresh air is never cheap anywhere in Bharncair. Now co along.”
“Where are we—”
They turned a corner and collided with the main market street.
Noise hit like the heat. Shops and stalls sprouted from every wall and alley, layered two or three deep, with half-collapsed tarps overhead leaking soot and oil instead of shade. Miners, rchants, and talwrights shouted themselves raw, hawking everything from glowing ingots to rusted machine joints. More carts screeched over iron rails. More sparks hissed from makeshift openair forges everywhere, and the air was an absolute stew of hot oil, tal filings, and… sweat, really. Maeve’s eyes were already watering in the heat.
This isn’t the Black Bloom Bazaar, and this isn’t the Hanging Market either.
This is—
“Welco to the Furnace Warrens,” Gael said with theatrical reverence. “The living, beating heart of Ironwych: ho of soot, sweat, and n who haven’t bathed since the last industrial revolution.”
Maeve grimaced as the stench hit her. “Ow,” she grumbled.
“Breathe deeply,” he advised cheerfully. “It builds character.”
She eyed the scene. It was chaos incarnate. The Black Bloom Bazaar, for all its criminal charm, at least tried to look pretty—its vines and flowers made the filth almost tender, while the Hanging Market beneath Vharnveil had a symphony of order, ruled by Mortifera Enforcers and the law of the gun. But this? This was entropy with a business license. Everybody could shout at the top of their lungs.
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“It’s like they’re competing to see who can be louder,” she muttered.
“And who can overcharge faster,” Gael added, already veering toward the nearest stall.
“Wait, just let —”
Too late. He’d already slipped into the maelstrom, dragging her by their chain. Very quickly, the two of them beca just another thread in the Furnace Warrens’ living knot, jostled on every side.
She wasn’t having fun. Gael, however, moved like smoke, shouldering through the crowd, flashing coins, and flicking his cane around to make way. “Two cogs for five? Please, good sir, at that price, you should at least buy dinner first!”
He cut across a crowd, ducked beneath a chain of hanging gear-parts, and slamd a handful of coins onto a counter. “Three pistons and a pressure valve!” he barked. “Gim! Gim now!”
The shopkeeper grumbled but obeyed, tossing a burlap sack of oily tal parts at him. Gael caught it, stuffed it into his coat like contraband, and moved on without missing stride. When another miner cursed him for cutting the line, Gael casually jabbed his cane backward. The man stumbled, tripped over a crate, and disappeared under a chorus of jeers.
“Gael!” Maeve hissed, dodging a swinging gear. “You’re going to get us both killed!”
“That depends on your definition of both!” he shouted back, ducking under a pipe and elbowing through another stall queue.
Soone lunged from behind, probably deciding Gael would make a good mark. Maeve reacted on instinct. She swung her briefcase hard, catching the attacker square in the ribs with a dull, solid thunk. The man wheezed and staggered away, muttering curses through his mask, and she stood there a mont glaring at Gael’s back.
“Would you stop starting fights, Raven?” she snapped.
Gael turned with a grin, half drunk, half delighted. “Not fights, dearest wife. Transactions. This is just how you bargain in the Furnace Warrens.”
“Okay, but what are we even doing here?” she demanded, struggling to keep up as he ducked between two shouting rchants trading blows with their price boards.
He flipped a coin into the air, caught it without looking, and tossed another bag of scrap under his coat. “Buying rare parts, of course! The clinic’s machines are falling apart. The sterilizers, the pumps, even the essence condensers… I’m not paying the Rot rchants’ highway robbery prices, so I’m buying them directly from the source.”
He moved to another table and gestured at a pile of components. A burly stall owner threw a handful of pipes toward him, and Gael threw an equal handful of coins back with a flick of his wrist. “Pleasure as always, my grimy friend! Don’t die before I co back next week!”
Then he turned to Maeve again, rummaging in his coat pocket until he produced a crumpled sheet of paper. “Here.” He slapped it into her hand. “Materials, gauges, and quantities. Buy the first half of everything on this list, and I’ll buy the other half.”
She blinked at it. “You want to help you shop? We’re supposed to be investigating Myrmurs!”
“That can wait, honestly. Do you see yourself hunting down a Myrmur Host in broad daylight?”
“Well, no, but—”
“Splendid!” he interrupted, tapping the chain between them with his cane. “Let’s et up in an hour, or I’ll co find you when I’m done! Bye!”
Before she could answer, he slipped away into the tide of tal and noise, shouting and bargaining with strangers once more.
… Saintess curse him.
He’s getting the couch for a week once we get back to the clinic.
She sighed as the furnace-heat pressed against her mask. Soone brushed her shoulder too roughly—and it irked her just a bit too much. She turned, swung her briefcase, and cracked it square into the man’s side. He stumbled off, cursing through his filter.
“That’s what I thought!” she snapped, brushing the soot from her sleeve.
She turned back to the list in her hand. Iron couplers, pressure gauges, insulated tubing, glass jars… The items went on forever. She raised her head and started staring at signs anyways, looking for where she could buy the first few parts.
Her patience began to boil as she shopped around.
“Four for two? That’s theft!” she snapped at one rchant.
“Then don’t buy it!” the man barked.
“I will—just from soone less dishonest!” she fired back, slamming two coins down and snatching the parts anyway.
By the fourth stall, she was shouting like the rest of them. By the eighth stall, she was fighting like the rest of them. Her blood raced with the heat, lungs straining in the tal-stained air. Her voice was hoarse. Even through the filters, everything slled like hot iron and sweat and steam.
At so point, she realized she was matching their rhythm—the constant back-and-forth of bargain, insult, exchange, and farewell curses. Maybe this was just how people survived here: not quietly, not politely, but through sheer volu and montum.
After thirty minutes, her throat burned and her hands ached. She’d bought half of her half of parts, but the coins in her pouch had nearly vanished, and she wasn’t sure if she’d been robbed or just too generous with her money.
She looked up.
A narrow staircase wound up the side of a nearby building. Without thinking, she climbed it, scaling iron steps slick with soot until she reached a third-floor balcony overlooking the chaos below. The air up here wasn’t any cooler, but it was thinner. Less crowded. She sat on the railings, crossing one leg over the other, and set her briefcase on her lap.
For a mont, she could almost breathe.
Below her, the Furnace Warrens roared like a living machine. The entire main street roared incessantly, and she listened to the layers of noise: the constant hamrs striking anvils, the rough coughing of engines behind closed doors, and the ear-grating buzz of chainsaws cutting tal plates.
She finally understood why everyone here seed to shout like lunatics. They had to. It was the only way one could be heard.
If I lived here twenty four hours a day, listening to all this, I’d probably go insane too.
It was ugly.
It was noisy.
It was… alive.
And, she had to admit, it was an interesting ward in a terrifying sort of way.
Guess I have it pretty easy in Blightmarch, huh?
Just as she was about to slide off the railings and return to the chaos below, her vision pulsed red.
Her breath hitched.
A Myrmur Host.
She froze, fingers gripping the railing. With thousands of bodies cramd together in a storm of noise and heat, it didn’t surprise her, really. It was only a matter of ti before she accidentally laid eyes on one.
She scanned the street through the haze, eyes narrowing. The pulsing red vision ca and went between the moving bodies, but then—there, near the end of the street.
A man turning the corner.
He looked exhausted.
“Damn it,” she whispered. Her hand tightened on the briefcase in her lap. She glanced around for Gael, hoping to see his ridiculous top hat or hear his voice barking over the crowd, but of course, he was nowhere to be found. Probably still shouting about valve prices.
I can tug the chain and get him to co back, but I can’t just sit here and wait for him.
It was just one Host. One Myrmur. She didn’t need Gael’s help for the fight, only the surgery part, so before the man could disappear from sight completely, she pushed off the railing.
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