The Stitcher's Debt

The Phantom Ward

The resonance wave did not roar it's way through the catacombs, but hummed it's way through, vibrating Rowan's fillings until his teeth ached.

When Rowan opened his eyes the heavy granite arches of the Ossuary were gone, and the stone sarcophogus Sterling had fallen upon had also vanished, along with the pale powdery bone-dust beneath his knees. Instead now there stretched an endless flat plain of grey slate, as cold as river-ice.

He sat up slowly, gasping in air that tasted of nothing.

"Sterling?" Rowan rasped, his voice coming out hollow, as if he was shouting into an empty iron drum.

Ten yards away a dark coat shifted against the grey slate. Lord Sterling pushed himself up onto his elbows, his tailored charcoal suit torn across the ribs, revealing white silk stained with arterial crimson. His silver pocket-watch lay in the dust beside him, the crystal cracked, it's inner workings frozen mid-revolution.

"I'm here," Sterling muttered, wiping a trail of blood from his chin with the back of a black-gloved hand, casting his eyes around the endless flat expanse. "She didn't cut the strand. If she had cut the strand we'd be breathing."

"She didn't need to cut it," Rowan said looking down at his arms.

The bare skin from his wrists to his shoulders was covered in solid, glowing golden lines that ran together into an intricate geometric braided pattern that hummed against his muscle. Where they joined against his chest a thick knot pulsed against his ribs, sending out a dull fevered warmth like a hot coin against his sternum.

"The resonance wave displaced us," Rowan continued, forcing himself to his feet. "We're in a dead-zone. The middle district..."

He trailed off as he turned in a slow circle.

Standing out of the flat slate plain like massive translucent icebergs were the colorless outlines of the upper ward. Towering brownstones, gas-lamps posts and heavy iron gates loomed before them in the distance, but they had no color, no texture, no weight. They were light without substance, the pale bleached impressions of a city that had lost it's anchor to time.

A man passed them by on a colorless street, bowler-hat in hand. He was completely grey, his face smooth and featureless, eyes, nose and mouth all gone. He marched steadily down the street, tipping his hat to a woman in a hoop skirt who was also grey, but who had no face either. Neither of them made a sound as their boots passed over the solid stone curb.

"The Phantom Ward," Sterling said, pushing himself up against the colorless impression of a hitching post. "The central district hasn't dropped into the void yet, but's history is bleeding out. These people... they don't know their own names Rowan. They're only repeating the last clean memory the thread holds."

"Vesper is heading for the Great Loom," Rowan said, pulling Vance's iron pliers from his coat. The cold metal was a blessed weight in his hand, it's heft solid and dark against the grey twilight. "The catacombs were just the entry-hatch. The central mechanism is directly beneath the bedrock of the High Cathedral."

"We can't walk through solid bedrock, Weaver," Sterling replied, checking his silver dagger. The runes etched along the blade were dim, flickering like a dying candle in a draft. "And with it's state right now, we're half-ghosts ourselves. Look at your shadow."

Rowan looked down at the grey slate beneath his boots.

Sterling's shadow was absent completely, where the nobleman stood there was no dark silhouette cast against the stone. Rowan's shadow remained though, it was not black but instead a bright shimmering outline of molten gold that twitched in time with the pulse in his chest.

"My shadow is anchored to the thread," Rowan said, stepping forward towards the translucent stairs of the cathedral's outline. "As long as my heart beats I'll have enough weight to drag us down into it's foundation."

"And when Vesper reaches the Loom?" Sterling asked, falling into step beside him, his gait slow and uneven from his bruised ribs. "She has the First Weaver's shuttle. She has thirty years of stolen Guild-mirror water. If you step onto the Loom-platform Rowan, the tension will siphon your blood right into the shuttles eye."

"Then we don't allow her to thread the needle," Rowan replied, his voice growing harder.

They climbed the ghostly steps of the cathedral, passing straight through the closed doors of the great hall as if they were morning mist. Inside the great nave was bathed in the pale twilight that filtered in through the colorless stained-glass windows. At the base of the great altar where the physical floor had shattered during the blast, a gaping circular pit opened up on the ground. In contrast to the translucent buildings that surrounded it, the pit was dark and jagged and very real. A spiral stairway of black void-iron twisted around the outer walls of the pit, vanishing into the depths below.

A low thundering groan rumbled up the iron stairs, the sound of massive wooden gears, thick copper cables and iron spindles turning under impossibly great tension.

The Great Loom was hot.

"She's already reached the controls," Sterling said, his voice taking on a harsh whisper. "Listen."

Over the grinding of the great Loom, a sharp rhythmic clack-clack-clack echoed out, the sound of an iron shuttle ramming back and forth across a great frame, cutting and reweaving the strands of foundation that kept the city together. With every clack another section of the pale brownstone above them flickered, their colorless outlines growing thin, growing closer to absolute-zero.

"She's unwriting the streets one by one," Rowan said, stepping onto the black iron stairs. "Starting from the outer wards and working inward."

"Rowan," Sterling caught his shoulder, his gloved fingers cold even through Rowan's duster. "If we go down there, there is no Guild-contract that binds you that will save us. The Council is either erased or tucked in their cellars. Vance is gone. If you burn out your bloodline to stop that shuttle from pulling all their mirror-water in, there is no mender on the face of the earth who can stitch you back together."

Rowan looked at Sterling's pale blood-stained face, then down at his own golden-braided hands.

"Vance said something when he brought me into the shop," Rowan said quietly, his voice echoing down the dark iron shaft. "He said a good mender doesn't stitch a coat because he loves the cloth. He stitches it because the person wearing it is going to freeze if he doesn't."

He turned and began his descent down the void-iron steps into the dark. "I don't care about the Guild, Sterling. But I'm not letting the people on Ironmonger Row freeze in the dark."

Sterling looked down into the abyss for a long moment, then let out a sharp quiet breath that sounded like dry paper sliding over slate. He adjusted the cuff of his torn sleeve, drew his runed dagger and followed the glowing golden shadow down into the heart of the world.