A building nearly as large as Prime Hall looms before us, but unlike the Prime’s meeting quarters, this building has no windows. I expect it to be guarded, but there’s not even a door, just a massive opening where several familiar wagons are stationed—the very same ones that made up the convoy I saw when working the fields in Bedrock.

“I thought it would be more . . . secure,” I say.

Asher shrugs. “Only way out with a wagon is through the front gate. Which is always guarded.”

I glance over my shoulder toward the rocky foothills that butt up against the rear of the town. There’s no wall, but the Serpent River and various rock forms create a natural barrier—one that can only be crossed on foot, and even then, not easily. Plus, there are patrols in the foothills, members serving the Reaper’s pillar who stand watch. I can see a few of their torches bobbing in the dark.

Asher leads the way inside, telling me about the pantry—the cool, dark cellar that holds jars upon jars of powder—and the kitchen on the ground level, where we’ll find Bronx the Chemist. Asher has pulled a candle out so we can see where we’re going, and I try not to think about all the stores of black powder waiting below our open flame. Spare wagon wheels and axles hang on the room’s walls, along with carpentry tools for repairs. There’s a strange clay tube pushed to one corner, like the barrel of a rifle, only five times larger. It would take several people to move it. Before I can ask Asher what it is, we’re entering a new room.

Here, floor-to-ceiling shelves are stocked with jars—some glass, some clay. From what I can make out, they hold one of three things: charcoal, sulfur, or a white, crystalline substance that looks an awful lot like salt. It must be saltpeter. These are the ingredients for black powder.

When we pass what must be the tenth shelf, we come upon a work area. Here, a woman with ghostly white skin is bent over a wide wooden desk. Glass jars hold candles that cast faint light on the ingredients she carefully measures and mixes. Her head is shaved like the Prime’s, but the short, stubby growth of hair on her scalp is a brilliant white. The eyepieces of the goggles she wears are tinted despite the already dim lighting, and another piece of eye equipment perches on her nose—two glass disks encased in frames that she looks through, all held in place by a wire that extends from the frames and hooks behind her ears.

“I like to work alone,” the Chemist says as we step nearer, her focus still locked firmly on her work.

“I told her that,” Asher says, “but she insisted on meeting you.”