Malengine, Rix thought. It was a word he’d been mulling over to use as the title of a book someday. It meant “evil machination” or, more literally, something constructed for an evil purpose. The Lodge was a malengine, built with the spoils of destruction, meant to shield the generations of murderers that Rix called his ancestors. If Usherland could be compared to a body, the Lodge was its malignant heart—silent now, but not stilled. Like Walen Usher, the Lodge listened, and brooded, and waited.
