Moses set it out on the table without ceremony, and the room got smaller around it.
There wasn't much. A few slim rods of dark metal like the one Trafalgar had turned over in the dark, their wire cradles corroded and burnt out. Shards of thick glass with a residue dried inside, some tarry sludge gone black and stinking faintly of something chemical. A ring of iron pegs. And the ugliest piece of all, a broken length of tubing they'd pulled out of the wreck of the nest itself, its inner surface eaten smooth by whatever had run through it.
"Alchemy," Moses said. "Or near enough that the difference doesn't help us. Somebody was dosing that brood, and dosing it steadily. The residue's in every one of these." He tapped the tubing with a thick finger. "This came out of the nest floor. They were feeding it into the thing directly, right where she brooded."
Trafalgar turned a rod over and let the pieces line up in his head. "That explains the size of her."
