The workshop was quiet, save for the rasp of a file on bone.
Mira held the Chimera's glass plating under the magnifying lens. "It's thick," she said. "Drilling mount holes will crack it."
"Don't drill," I said. "Clamp. We build a cage around the plate, not through it."
I was working on the spine of the Centurion. It wasn't a scavenged skeleton; it was a composite. Bear femurs for the core, reinforced with iron bands stripped from the old library crates. It was heavy, ugly, and dense.
Gareth tested the weight of a leg segment. He grunted. "This isn't a summon. It's a statue."
"It's an anchor," I said. "The Hollow Lands have wind that strips bark off trees. Marrow is too light. Hollow is useless in a gale. We need something that sits."
"How do we carry it?" Pelham asked. He was packing crate straw into gaps to stop the rattling.
"We don't carry it," I said. "It carries us."
