CHAPTER TWENTY ONE - MASTERPIECE

To an ordinary butcher, flesh is merely a heap to be hacked apart; to an ordinary healer, a burden to be mended. But to Morrow, flesh was no different from a rough log of wood waiting to be whittled, a block of marble still unworked.

Deep within the Brothers’ Pass, in the workshop carved into the quietest and best-ventilated part of the mountain, the air held no scent of blood or rot. It was thick with the clean smell of heavy lavender incense and silver instruments boiled clean.

In his spotless white leather apron, Morrow was bent over the Attiv, who lay senseless atop the marble table. In his left hand he held a slender Putridglass, glowing with a yellowish light from within; in his right, a silver scalpel. He had slowly opened the creature’s shoulder joint, channeling the power of the Essence of Being into the gap in a single wave, stretching the very structure of the bone. As he worked there was no strain on his face, no disgust — he wore the same calm, focused expression as a master carpenter mending the leg of an old chair.

When the work was done, the creature on the marble table would become a new product, its shoulders broadened out of all proportion and its muscles thickened so it could shove the heavy rocks in the mines. To Morrow it was not a living thing; it was merely an object made to order.

Two knocks came at the workshop’s heavy oak door.

Morrow wiped the silver scalpel clean on a cloth and laid it slowly on the table. For the bone’s stretching to reach its final stage, the body needed several hours to settle into itself. He would return to the rest of the work in the evening. “Enter,” he said, his voice smooth as silk and just as cold.

The door cracked open and one of the Summit Wardens stepped inside. As always when he entered Morrow’s workshop, the man kept his eyes off the body on the marble table and fixed them on the floor. “Forgive the disturbance, Leader Morrow. But there’s word from the southern pass. The Desert Kingdom’s envoys and traders have arrived. They wait for passage and for trade.”

Morrow smiled faintly as he washed his hands in a silver basin filled with lavender water. The blood mingling with the water dispersed like a red mist.

“The Desert Kingdom?” Morrow murmured, drying his hands on a soft towel. “Always in need of slaves. I admire that bottomless appetite of theirs. What do they do with all those Attiv in that hellish heat? They must be working them under the sun until they crack, raising those colossal temples of theirs.”

Morrow tossed the towel aside and walked toward the warden. The Desert Kingdom was not two-faced like the rest of humanity. They bought slaves, and in return they left behind either pure gold or — worth more still — the Firedrop crystal unique to the Desert Kingdom, which stored as much Essence of Being as a grown Attiv. For years they had been the most loyal and the most silent customers of the Brothers’ Pass.

“Go down and open the storehouses to them,” Morrow ordered. “Show them even the weak ones left over from last week, the ones on the verge of death. The Desert Kingdom always pays the best price; they make no distinction between weak and strong. Let’s see how much coin I can wring out from under those golden sands this time. Open at double the price — we’ll come down to thirty percent of that through haggling. We’ll be needing that gold for our great guests, the ones soon to arrive.”

As the warden bowed his head and hurried out of the workshop, Morrow’s mind had already drifted to the next and truly great move: the Great Auction.

Talon, with that crude mind of his, saw the auction as a show of force. Morrow saw it through a different eye. What interested him was not the auction but the running of it. The Inquisition was the sword of the Sanctified Bloodlines. To break the first order they had given and bring the spoils to auction alongside the Guild — if it weren’t handled correctly, it was the sort of move that would have everyone’s head struck off. That was why he had put himself on the table, not Talon.

If the envoys of the Inquisition and the Guild who came to the Brothers’ Pass felt themselves cheapened, or saw themselves humiliated, this auction would turn not into a trade war but into a true bloodbath. It was essential to smooth the ground, to stroke their pride, and to offer them the luxury of the Capital even in this pit of hell.

Morrow left his workshop and began walking toward the private wing of the Brothers’ Pass carved into the rock, the wing set aside for guests.

This place was entirely cut off from the mountain’s vile mines and muddy streets. The thick Capital carpets laid across the floor, the Desert Kingdom silks hanging on the walls, and that heavy, costly perfume in the air made it resemble a nobleman’s manor far more than a den of cutthroats.

Morrow stepped into one of the prepared suites. With a meticulous eye he swept over the arrangement of the furniture, the angle of the candelabra. A few servants waited in the corners, hands clasped before them, gripped by fear.

“Is this the room where the Inquisition’s envoy will stay?” Morrow asked, approaching the carved mahogany table at the center of the room.

“Yes, my lord,” said one of the servants, his voice trembling. “Just as you wished, we’ve laid the finest silks from the Desert Kingdom on the bed. And we’ve left the wine on the table to breathe.”

Morrow slowly took up the silver goblet sitting on the table. He held the ruby-red wine to the light and studied the depth of its color. Then he brought the goblet to his nose and drew that rich aroma into himself. Finally, he took a small sip and rolled the liquid over his tongue.

The silence in the room was as heavy as the silence of a grave. The servants could not so much as breathe.

Morrow swallowed. With an exceedingly graceful motion, without the slightest sound, he set the goblet back on the table. There was no sign of anger on his face — only a deep, painful disappointment.

“Who chose this wine from the cellar?” Morrow asked, his voice soft as a whisper.

“I — I did, my lord,” said a servant, stepping forward. He was a young man, the strength in his knees about to give way. “A twenty-year Southern Slope vintage. The most expensive—“

“A twenty-year Southern Slope, yes,” said Morrow, slowly running his finger along the rim of the silver goblet. “A rich body, an earthy opening. But… the cork of the oak cask has let in air. Contact with oxygen has spoiled that beautiful balance of twenty years. On the finish there’s a tart, vinegary taste that scrapes at the palate. It wasn’t treated with Crownamber in the making.”

Morrow walked toward the young servant with heavy steps. He laid his hands on the man’s shoulders and looked down at him with a father’s tenderness.

“If we had offered this goblet to the Inquisition’s envoy, that man — as the eyes and ears of the Sanctified Bloodlines — would have thought us nothing but a lawless band of cutthroats, that even with money in our hands we were devoid of taste and nobility. I can endure brute force. I can turn a blind eye to stupidity. But tastelessness and flawed workmanship… that is the one sin I cannot abide.”

Just as the servant opened his mouth to apologize, the thumb and forefinger of Morrow’s left hand closed over the man’s lips with the speed of lightning. He gripped them tight.

The servant whimpered in pain but could make no sound between Morrow’s fingers.

“Since you cannot taste good wine,” said Morrow, still holding the man’s lips, “then you have no need of a tongue, either.”

Morrow turned his head toward the warden at the door.

“Take this one outside. Have them cut out his tongue. Then never let me see him again.”

The warden moved quickly and took the young man by the arms. Gasping, with silent shrieks, the servant was dragged out of the room.

As Morrow wiped his fingers on a silk handkerchief, he turned to the other servants. They had all shrunk into their corners; not one of them raised his head.

“Bring a new goblet. The left wing of the cellar, second row, the North Vineyard. Monastery-made. Try that one.”

Two of the terrified servants bowed their heads and ran out of the wing.

Morrow drew a deep breath and was left alone in the room. Perfection did not come easily. In this pit of hell he had to oversee every detail himself. He could not buy the envoys with ordinary wines, with gold, or with fear. He had to satisfy the true corruption that lay beneath their rigid, pious masks. He had to give them something so rare they could not find it even in the Capital.

A masterpiece.

In Morrow’s mind rose the image of that young, delicately built Attiv girl the Herbalist had pulled from the mine and sent up to the workshop. He closed his eyes. As he thought of the long, delightful hours he would spend modifying the girl, a wave of pure pleasure spread down his spine.

First he would break those sharp shoulder bones of hers, fusing them slowly with the Essence of Being so they fell into a softer, more graceful curve. He would strip that gray of slavery from her skin and create beneath it a texture of porcelain smoothness that even the nobles of the Capital would envy. He would tune her vocal cords so that even the screams the girl let out would reach the ear as harmonious music, a melody bent into submission. He would take her out of being a mere creature of flesh and turn her into a living object of desire — one that would steal the wits of the Inquisition’s envoy, that would make him Morrow’s puppet at the bargaining table.

This was not torture. The word torture did not exist in Morrow’s lexicon. This was art. He took the rough drafts the gods had left half-finished and created them anew with his own perfect vision.

Morrow poured that flawed wine in the room out onto the carpet and flung the goblet into the corner. He was impatient to return to his workshop, to that waiting canvas of his. This auction war he was about to begin would be the greatest sale in the history of the Brothers’ Pass — and the one who would orchestrate it would be the true artisan of this mountain.