The room reeked of ozonated rain, wet wool and old iron - the telltale scent of a breach. In the middle of the third floor hallway the wallpaper had parted like wet tissue paper. Behind it there was no plaster, no timber studs but an endless, velvet twilight with two bloated, pale moons floating above a sea of black sea-grass. The air coming off the void was frigid and had the metallic taste of copper and dry bone. Rowan did not produce his gun. The gun was a mortal instrument and mortals rarely crawled out of seams. Instead he drew a heavy coil of silver-wound copper thread and a pair of long-nosed iron pliers from his duster and pinched the frayed edge of the rift. He draw it taut against the drywall and began to stitch reality back together. The copper sang as it bit into the edge of existence, sending out small, sputtering sparks of orange light which smelled of burning hair. "You're using the wrong knot" rasped a voice from the dark corridor behind him. Rowan did not fl

They smelled salt fish and old wood as they climbed down the stone stairs beneath Saltgate Wharf, but the scent of quicksilver and foul perfume took over as they neared the bottom. The docks had been carved out of undersea brick vaults and smuggling tunnels called the Under-Tide. Oil lamps hung from the roof in thick glass spheres, glowing with the strange bioluminescent algae that thrived at the edges of the deep. The Market of Unborn Things had opened, its velvet-draped stalls offering such wares as clockwork mechanisms never completed by their makers (all dead), poems that had been burnt into history before the ink was even dry, and crystalline vials of bottled memories from men who had preferred to forget what they once knew. 'Keep your head down and your coat buttoned,' Sterling murmured, his shadow stretching wide before him like a hound straining at a leash. 'These merchants are refugees from collapsing dimensions - they can smell a Weaver's copper ten paces away.' Rowan

Rowan went down on his knees on the cellar steps, flinging the match away from him, but the dying ember never touched the damp wood. The cellar was plunged into darkness, save for the fiery, golden thread in the channels that ran up the forearms of young Vance. "Master Vance," he gasped, seizing the old man by the shoulders with shaking hands. Vance was light, positively light, all bone and sinew wrapped in wool, the twin of dry twigs tossed on the fire. Instead of legs, he had a dissolving cloud of the grey Void-ash trailing from his ankles, and the tiny embers that occasionally escaped the clutches of gravity hissed and died on the floorboards. "Don't... don't touch the thread, boy," Vance's milky eyes rolled upwards, blind and unseeing, fixed on the golden glow emanating from the palms of Rowan's hands. He sounded as if there was a shard of copper in his lungs, each ragged breath producing a metallic ring. "They used mirror-water in the shop, unstitched thirty years of my lif

The air in the Cathedral of the High Loom smelled of cold frankincense and burning tallow, but in the sweet incense ran the metallic tang of dry blood. Rowan leaned against a towering marble pillar, his breath coming in ragged, shallow gasps, arms bare to the shoulders, his blood-soaked linen sleeves torn away, his golden veins tracing no more fine lines over his skin, but thick, radiant braids that pulsed visible light up and down his arms, casting long, geometric shadows over the fluted stone. Sterling stood ten paces ahead at the very edge of the cathedral, his dark duster dusted in white plaster, the ceiling having fallen in around him in the last few minutes. In his hand he held open his silver pocket watch, watching the hands spin backwards in lazy, rhythmic sweeps. "The Cathedral was built over the First Vault in '04," Sterling said, facing forward as he spoke, his voice devoid of any emotion as he watched the hands continue their backwards progress. "The architects use

The stairwell ended abruptly in the chamber of a cathedral, but not one that any man would have recognized. The Cathedral was an enormous space, its ceiling lost in a thick ceiling of grey, ozonated mist.Here, on the deepest level of the Cathedral, the Great Loom was nestled in the bedrock: an immense mechanical mountain of ancient oak beams, cast iron flywheels, and six story tall brass tension drums. From the ceiling vaults, thousands of translucent silver copper cables hung down to a central, iron bound harness, which clattered and boomed with the rhythmic throb of a great heartbeat.CLACK-CLACK. WHIRR. CLACK-CLACK.With every stroke of the great wooden shuttle against the central iron harness, a blinding shockwave of violet light shot along the cables, sending great echoing vibrations down through the stone floor.On the high catwalk, just above the central harness of the Loom, stood Vesper. Her silver scarred arms were braced against a pair of massive brass levers as she battled