Chapter 6 The Anatomy of Stone

The morgue didn't smell like death. It smelled like a damp cellar and a bucket of old pennies.

Drip. Drip. Drip.

The ice blocks under the slabs were melting, the water hitting the zinc floor with a flat, hollow sound that made my skin crawl. Every time I moved, the Cold-Iron chain at my neck gave a sharp, mocking rattle against my collarbone.

The old coroner didn't even wait for Linus to finish his command; he saw the Captain's face and bolted, leaving his bone saw vibrating on the table. The iron door slammed shut, the heavy bolt sliding home with a thud that felt like a punch to my stomach.

"Don't just stand there, apothecary," Linus's voice rasped from the shadows.

He dropped his end of the chain. It pooled on the floor like a dead snake. He didn't move to help, just leaned against the door, crossing his massive arms. He was a mountain of black wool and lethal intent, watching me to see if I'd faint.

I ignored the tremor in my hands and reached for the shroud. I yanked it back.

The sight made my bile rise.

This wasn't a man; it was a statue caught in a scream. He'd been a dockworker, but now his muscles were grey, brittle ridges. His fingers were hooked like talons, buried so deep into the meat of his own throat that he'd snapped his own petrified windpipe trying to get air.

I rapped my knuckles against his shoulder.

Clack. It sounded like hitting a tombstone. No skin, no give. Just cold, mineral-encrusted silence.

"A curse? Or just a very expensive mistake?" Linus asked, his boots thudding as he moved closer.

"Curses don't smell like this," I muttered. My fear was still there, but the familiar weight of the scalpel in my hand felt like an anchor. I didn't think about 'truth'; I thought about the grain of the stone. I hiked up my emerald sleeves. "Light. Now. Unless you want me to cut blind."

Linus paused, the air in the room dropping five degrees as he weighed the insult. Then, the acetylene lamp flared. He stepped up to the opposite side of the table, the harsh, white glare washing out the grey features of the dead man.

"Scalpel. And the acid," I held out my hand.

He placed the steel in my palm. His fingers were like ice, sending a jolt up my arm that I didn't have time to process.

I didn't pour the acetic acid carefully. I splashed it.

HISSSSS-

Thick, foul-smelling white froth boiled up from the corpse's chest. The smell was sharp enough to make my eyes water-vinegar mixed with something bitter and metallic. The stone skin didn't melt; it began to flake and bubble, turning into a grainy, wet slush that looked like rotting plaster.

"Hold the lamp steady," I gritted out, grabbing the saw.

SCREECH-GRIND-

The sound set my teeth on edge. It was the sound of a file on a rusted gate. I put my weight into it, my shoulder muscles screaming as I forced the teeth through the calcified ribs. Shards of grey grit and white foam sprayed my face, sticking to my sweat and silver hair. I didn't care. I sawed until the chest plate gave way with a wet, splintering CRACK.

I tossed the saw aside and shoved my hands into the jagged hole. There was no blood. Only a handful of red, crystalline grit-like ground-up garnets-and a thick, blue slime that coated my fingers.

It felt like liquid needles.

"Linus... look at this."

He leaned in, his shoulder brushing mine. The heat of him was a shock against the damp cold of the morgue.

Inside the chest, where a heart should have been, sat a brass-and-copper pump. It was a nightmare of gears and translucent tubes, all of them clogged with that same blue sludge. A small crystal was wedged in the center of the brass, flickering with a weak, dying spark.

"It's a machine," I whispered, my heart hammering against my own ribs. I used the tweezers to pull at a leaking tube. The blue slime hissed as it hit the zinc table. "It's scrap metal. Someone ripped him open and put a clockwork heart in him to make him run longer, but the seals failed."

I looked up at Linus, my face smeared with grey dust and white froth. "This blue rot... it leaked directly into his veins. It didn't just kill him. It turned his blood into mortar. He turned to stone while he was still trying to scream."

The only sound in the room was the drip-drip of the ice and the heavy, rhythmic thrumming of the mechanical heart in Linus's own chest.

"I see," he said.

He didn't move away. He circled the table until he was standing directly behind me. I tried to pull my hands out of the corpse, but he was already there, his hands bracing the table on either side of me. I was trapped between the smoking, open chest of the dead man and the living, breathing wall that was Linus Kerr.

The heat of him soaked through my emerald velvet dress, making my skin feel raw.

"The Brandt family... they've been bragging about 'enhanced labor' at the foundries," he murmured, his breath a freezing mist against the back of my neck.

I went rigid. I could feel the individual buttons of his vest pressing into my spine. My hands were still covered in that blue slime and red sand.

"I gave you the killer," I said, my voice barely a thread. "Now take the chain off. Let me go back to my shop."

Linus didn't answer. He leaned down, burying his face in the crook of my neck, inhaling the scent of the acid, the stone dust, and the sharp, frantic sweat of my fear.

"You've seen the Brandt's dirty laundry now, Lillian," he whispered, his hand leaving the table to slide around my waist. His fingers were a cold brand through the fabric. "If I let you walk out that door, you'll be a petrified statue in a ditch before the sun sets."

He pulled me back until I was flush against him, my head forced onto his shoulder. His other hand seized my chin, his thumb-stained with my own grey grit-smearing across my bottom lip.

"You stay in the Tower. My cage is the only one in Pyre City with a lock the Brandts can't pick."

He looked at my mouth, his indigo eyes darkening into something that looked less like duty and more like hunger.

"Besides... I think I prefer you when you're covered in the dust of my enemies."

Would you like me to move on to Chapter 7, or would you like to perform another "autopsy" on this one?