Yvain took the watch and turned it over in his palm, the faint lamplight glinting across its dulled brass. It was not finely crafted, too heavy in some places, uneven in others. No artisan's mark, no family crest. Only a small, shallow etching along the rim: made in Kantos. A trinket of little value to most, yet bound to its owner by sentiment stronger than gold.
"What do you need?" Ivie asked, her eyes already scanning the shelves and clutter. "A bowl of water, crystal balls, cards?"
"Nothing," he murmured.
He shut his eyes, tightening his grip on the pocket watch as though wringing out its essence. Slowly, carefully, he loosened the barriers of his mind, letting his perception seep outward like ink bleeding into paper.
The familiar dark came first, a suffocating black. Then, little by little, a pale gray stirred at the edges of the void, shadows folding into shapes, textures, smells. He was no longer in the stifling office. The air around him grew damp and acrid, heavy with the stink of lime, piss, and rotting hides. A tannery.
Crude beams stretched overhead, dripping with condensation. Wooden vats brimmed with chemical broth that steamed faintly in the gloom. Workers' silhouettes moved like phantoms, their faces blurred, their voices muffled as though he were watching from beneath still water.
The world resolved in sluggish waves, each detail clawing its way out of the haze. Yvain stood within the tannery. The place was cavernous, a warehouse that had grown sick with its own work.
Rows of stone pits stretched across the floor, filled with brackish liquid that fumed and gurgled, releasing a stench that clung to the throat. Half-cured hides, pale as corpses, were draped over beams overhead, dripping steadily onto the floors below. Every few seconds a droplet would strike the stone with a sound like ticking.
The light came not from lamps but from thin cracks in the roof where moonlight filtered through, catching on the vapors and painting ghostly shafts across the room. In that light, the workers appeared.
But they were not right. Their faces were blurred, as though smeared by a thumb over wet ink. Their motions were mechanical, too smooth, too deliberate. Hands plunged into the foul vats and pulled out hides, but the hides twitched, as though still alive. The workers did not react. Their mouths moved, yet no words escaped, only the sound of bubbling water and the groan of leather being stretched.
Yvain pushed deeper, searching for Bret.
There, at the far side of the tannery, slumped against a wall. A boy, perhaps seventeen, his features only half-formed in the haze of vision, but clearer than the others. His chest rose and fell shallowly, his hand clutching the very pocket watch Yvain now held. Around him, shadows pooled thicker, as though drawn to him.
Something shifted.
In the vats, the hides began to stir in unison, rising just above the liquid surface. They no longer looked like animal skins but human. Faces, eyes stitched shut, mouths gaping open as if to scream. Their dripping formed a new rhythm now, an accelerating cadence, like a heartbeat closing in.
And behind Bret, in the corner where no light reached, a shape stood. One of the blurred workers. Taller. And unusually still.
Yvain felt the weight of its gaze turn toward him, though he knew, rationally, the vision should not allow such a thing.
At that moment, the vision broke.
When Yvain's eyes snapped open, the reek of the tannery still lingered in his nostrils. He drew a steadying breath, finding Latch and Ivie watching him expectantly.
"I saw a tannery," he said at once, unwilling to draw out the silence. His voice came out lower than intended. "A horrid one. Most likely his place of work. Did his mother leave the address?"
"She did," Latch replied, flipping through his notes until his finger stopped. "It's in the slums near the undermarket. Rat's Nest Lane."
"Then that's where we'll go," Ivie said. She rose swiftly, snatching her coat from its peg. It was long and dark, the kind that hid more than it revealed. As she shrugged into it, the seams shifted with the weight of concealed tools and oddments she liked to call her contingencies.
Latch stood next, buckling his thin rapier to his waist with an almost ceremonial air. "We'll handle it from here," he told Yvain, tone clipped, professional. "I'll see your pay is sent once we're finished."
Yvain's hand tightened around the pocket watch before he set it on the desk. "I'd like to follow," he said quietly, though there was steel beneath it. His gaze moved from Latch to Ivie. "If that's acceptable."
"It could be dangerous," Ivie said, her voice calm, but edged with the kind of seriousness she only used when the risks were real.
"I'm aware." Yvain's answer was steady, neither defensive nor hesitant.
She turned to Latch, as though giving him the deciding word. He only shrugged, thin shoulders lifting beneath his coat.
"Fine," she said at last. "Just stay behind us."
Yvain inclined his head in agreement, and with that, they set out.
A carriage ferried them as far as Rat's Nest Lane. The coachman refused to drive further, muttering under his breath about cutthroats and footpads. The man spat for luck before snapping his reins and retreating the way they'd come. The three continued on foot, boots scuffing against the uneven cobbles, where gutter water ran black and slow.
"What did you mean," Latch asked after a while, his voice unusually cautious, "when you said the tannery was horrid?"
Yvain's brow furrowed as he recalled the vision. "It felt alive."
Latch gave him a sidelong look, frowning at the phrasing.
Ivie broke the tension with a sharp elbow to his ribs. "Then whatever it is, I'll blow it to smithereens," she declared with grim cheer, producing from her coat an odd sphere of metal and clay, its surface scarred with careful etchings, a fuse wire protruding like a tail.
Yvain studied it. "Is that an explosive?"
"Yes!" Ivie beamed, her pride almost childlike. "One of my own designs. It uses a new prototype of gunpowder from Kantos. Wickedly unstable stuff."
The name stirred Yvain's curiosity. The Machine City of Kantos, one of the four great cities along the Crossroad was said to be the beating heart of invention. Alchemists there had redefined the world: airships that challenged the clouds, muskets that bit through armor, and automatons that could work without sleep.
Yvain had never set foot within its walls, but he had devoured every account he could find. Kantos was heralded as the spearpoint of the Sixth Age, where machines replaced sorcery, and iron and smoke outpaced even the mystery thaumaturgic. In Malkuth, the old disciplines were waning. But in Kantos, alchemy, especially its machinery aspect, thrived.
"I'll be in your care," he joked and Ivie flashed him a thumb.
It took a few detours but they found the tannery before long. It looked perfectly ordinary.
The squat brick building loomed over them, its wide windows shuttered but unbroken, its doors intact, its plastered sign faintly legible: GANT'S TANNERY. HIDES & LEATHERWORK. Outside, racks of drying hides swayed slightly in the wind, their brown-grey skins stiff as boards. Buckets of lime water sat in neat rows beside them, and the faint reek of curing leather drifted out, a stench sharp but not unusual.
"Doesn't look horrid to me," Latch muttered, eyeing the place with skepticism.
"Looks like any other tannery," Ivie agreed, though her hand never strayed far from the strap that held her explosives. "Stinks like one too."
Yvain stood still, taking in the sight. To his vision earlier, the place had been twisted, walls swollen as if the very brick had flesh. But here, in the fading daylight, it seemed harmless. A craftsman's workshop. A laborer's livelihood.
"I might have overreacted," he said, not that he believed it.
"Nerves?" Ivie suggested. "It's your first day, don't sweat it."
Yvain smiled back, then turned his gaze back to the building. Something was terribly wrong here.