The roar of the mob below the window was a distant, meaningless thunder. Inside the chamber, the only sound was the soft hiss of pistons from Kestrel's steam-gauntlets and the ragged breathing of the man who had come to kill him. Kestrel remained on his throne of scrap, a predator at rest, and gestured with one massive, metal-clad hand to the center of the room.
"Come in, ghost," he rumbled, his voice laced with arrogant amusement. "You've earned a closer look at the man who is going to kill you."
The Wraith stepped forward, the broken pieces of his mask doing little to hide the cold fire in his eyes. "I'm not here for a look," his voice was a low rasp of contained fury. "I'm here for the butcher's bill. For the lives you took in a workshop full of artists and engineers."
Kestrel chuckled, the sound deep and ugly. "The ghost of the foundry. I've heard the whispers. All that work, all that struggle, just for a chance to die at my feet." He leaned forward, the metal of his gauntlets groaning. "But all I see is a broken man. The Cogwork's best? They should be embarrassed."
"You know nothing about the Cogwork," the Wraith bit out.
"I know they took men of talent and turned them into dogs on a leash," Kestrel countered, his voice hardening. "I know they work for a Crown that lets this city rot from the inside. We, the Vultures, are the cure. We are evolution." He paused, his eyes glinting with malice. "Your engineer, for example. She was a genius. Her work will help us build a new age. A pity she had to be a loose end."
That was the trigger. The last thread of Elias's control snapped. He lunged.
The fight was not a duel; it was a storm. Kestrel met his charge not by rising, but by swinging a gauntleted fist that turned the steel floor plates where Elias had been into a crater of twisted metal. The force of the blow threw Elias back, the air knocked from his lungs. Kestrel was on his feet now, a true giant, his every step shaking the chamber. He was a force of nature, a walking engine of destruction.
The Wraith was a blur of motion, his blade-stick a silver streak, but it was like trying to stop a locomotive with a pin. He dodged and weaved, the whoosh of Kestrel's fists and the shriek of tortured metal filling the air. Kestrel, in a fit of rage, backhanded his own massive desk, sending the engine block spinning across the room like a child's toy. Elias used his speed, his movements economical and desperate, but he was always on the defensive, always a fraction of a second from being pulverized.
Kestrel laughed, a booming, triumphant sound. "Is this it, agent? Is this your righteous fury? It's pathetic!" He lunged, and this time his blow connected, not with a fist, but with the back of his hand, sending Elias flying into a weapon rack. He crumpled to the floor, his head slamming against the steel, his mask cracking further. Blood trickled down his temple.
He lay there, vision swimming, as the massive silhouette of Kestrel stood over him.
"Look at you," Kestrel gloated, nudging him with a metal-clad boot. "We killed your woman and her workers without breaking a sweat. We blew your pathetic little house to ash and you weren't even home to die in it. We are everywhere. We are everyone. And you… you are nothing."
Elias pushed himself up onto one elbow, his head throbbing, the taste of blood in his mouth. He looked up at the triumphant giant, and a single word escaped his lips, cold and clear. "Enough."
Suddenly, the room erupted in a symphony of hissing steam and snapping, high-tensile wires. Kestrel's eyes widened in shock as a web of razor-sharp monofilament strings shot out from the walls, the floor, the ceiling—springing from the very wreckage he had created. They wrapped around his limbs, his torso, his neck, pulling taut with the force of multiple steam-driven pistons. The wires bit deep, slicing through his skin. With a final, violent jerk, the trap hoisted the giant into the air, leaving him suspended a foot off the ground, a puppet tangled in invisible, blood-red strings.
He roared, a sound of agony and fury. "What is this?! How?!"
The Wraith rose slowly to his feet, a dominating and terrifying figure, half his face now visible through the shattered mask. "When you threw your desk," he explained, his voice a blade of ice, "you exposed the high-pressure steam conduit I needed. When you smashed the weapon rack, you gave me my anchor point. Your every move, your every moment of mindless destruction, was just another knot in your own noose. You built this trap yourself. I just held the string."
He stepped forward, standing face-to-face with the suspended, bleeding Talon. "Now. You will tell me about The Jackal. You will tell me why you murdered Elara. And you will tell me the secret of the voice box."
Kestrel, even while being cut to ribbons, threw his head back and laughed, a gurgling, bloody sound. "Go to hell, ghost."
The rage Elias had held back for so long finally consumed him. With a single, swift motion, he used the blade in his stick to sever the primary steam line fueling the trap. The pistons contracted with maximum force. The wires tightened. And Kestrel was silent.
The only sound in the room was the distant, oblivious roar of the crowd and the slow drip… drip… drip… of blood onto the steel floor. Wounded and exhausted, Elias limped to the wreckage of Kestrel's desk, searching for his next lead. He found a hidden compartment. Inside, there was no ledger, no map. Just a single photograph.
It showed Kestrel, younger and grinning, a proud brawler with his arm slung around another man. But it was this other man that made Elias's blood run cold. He was older, in his late forties, with sharp, intelligent eyes that held a chilling calm. His hands were meticulous, the hands of a surgeon or a master clocksmith. The contrast was jarring—the brutish, physical power of Kestrel standing beside the cold, calculating intellect of this stranger.
And Elias knew him.
The blood drained from his face as a single, impossible question burned through his mind.
Who was this man? And why was he standing with a Vulture?