Adrian Tchaikovsky - Empire in Black and Gold

He was leaving her behind.

She stood up. Clearly meditation was not the order of the day. He could not begin to know how much he had hurt her, when he had come in to ask Tynisa to join him and said nothing to Che, even though she was right there in the same room. Some way or other she would make him take her too because staying here at home with the rejection would hurt her far more than anything that might happen to her in Helleron.

She tidied her crumpled robes. She could not give up now. She would just have to find him and tell him. There was no more to it than that.

Traditionally the houses of Collegium’s richest and most privileged citizens were ranged up against the Great College itself. Perhaps it was considered inspiring to watch the students prepare for the governance of tomorrow’s world. Besides, many of the great and the good were current or past College Masters, and probably felt at home close by.

There was, however, one straggle of buildings not favoured by either the great or the good, and that was the wing housing the Halls of Artifice. For the furnace burned day and night, and the air above was ahaze with smoke and steam, while the immediate neighbourhood smelled of oil, molten metal and burning chemicals. Anyone trying to sleep anywhere near the Halls would need earplugs, and few of Collegium’s industrialists relished being reminded of the source of their wealth when they opened their shutters. Instead the housing round about was home for lowly College staff and students who could afford no better.

Stenwold arrived at the main portal leading to the Halls of Artifice and gazed at the curving line of workshops and smithies stretching away in front of him, remembering. They had added two new buildings since he had made his own prentice pieces here. Meanwhile two decades more of grime had settled on the hard-edged stonework around him. Forget the politics, the arts martial, the philosophy and history, here was the engine that had driven Collegium since the revolution which had ended the Bad Old Days. This was the hub that made the Beetle city great: not fighters, not schemers, not tatty mystics, but makers . And Stenwold was not alone in possessing this surname. Amongst his industrious nation the names of Maker, Smithy and Wright were as common as dirt.

He went inside, his clean robes already flecked with soot and ash, and swept past the porter with a nod, passing on through clamouring hall after hall, lit glowing red by furnaces, clogged with steam, until he finally located Totho.

With the excitement and distraction of the Games so close no ordinary student could be expected to be working today. But artificers were an odd breed. Totho was not the only one of them at work in the machine-heavy confines of the workshop. The few others were all true-bred Beetle-kinden, with a single Tarkesh Ant standing out bleach-pale amongst them. They were all bound together by their dedication to their craft. Among them Stenwold recognized an artisan’s son and the daughter of a prominent silk merchant hard at work, each absorbed in some private mechanical dream. Totho was no different, as he stood hunched over a pedal-lathe, staring through dark goggles and sheets of sparks, as he machined a section of metal into shape.

Stenwold approached him, but did not distract the youth from his task. There were half a dozen mechanisms already lying on the bench beside him, all seemingly versions of the same artefact, and all meticulously detailed. Stenwold had heard how good Totho was at his chosen business. It was a shame, then, that the lad was a poor halfbreed and an orphan. If he had come with a finer provenance the word his masters would have used of him was ‘great’. Collegium had spent centuries in the pursuit of freedom for all, opportunity for everyone, and if Totho had been in any other city he would have been a slave at worst, or at best an unskilled labourer. Here in Collegium he had acquired scholarship and skills, but the weight of his ancestry was like a chain about his ankles. He had all the written rules on his side, and all the unwritten ones working against him.

Stenwold picked up one of the finished items to inspect. It was a tube about as big as his fist, and he could see there was some manner of pump within it, but the precise purpose of it eluded him. Totho glanced at him briefly, then stopped pedalling and stepped away from the lathe. With the goggles, the gauntlets, the apron and the leather cap, he could have been any apprentice artificer in that busy little group, but Stenwold had recognized him instantly from the inward hunch of his shoulders, the slight downturn to his head.

‘Did you want me, Master Maker?’ the youth asked. His voice was an artificer’s through and through: not loud but specially pitched to carry across the machine noise.

‘I trained in this very hall,’ Stenwold told him, unconsciously slipping into the same register. ‘But it’s been a while since I had to weld a join or fix a spring. What is this thing?’

‘It’s an air battery, Master Maker.’

‘You don’t need to be formal with me, Totho,’ Stenwold told him, then added, ‘I don’t recall air batteries being part of the syllabus.’

‘Just a personal project, sir,’ Totho said. ‘Only, with everyone else away at the Games, it seemed a chance to. .’

‘I know, yes.’ Nothing I didn’t do myself, at his age. I thought I was going to be an artificer for life, when I was young. ‘I feel embarrassed to ask, because I’m sure I should already know, but what exactly is an air battery?’

The change in the youth was remarkable. The animation in him built momentum like a machine itself as he explained, taking his creation apart with gloved hands. ‘You see, sir, there’s a chamber here with air in. . see the one-way valve I’ve put in here. . now it’s full and. . you cock it like a repeating crossbow, with this lever here — just with your thumb, though, three or four times. . and then you’ve put the air under pressure, lots of pressure. . and then, with this lever here, you can release it all at once. . and you produce almost as much force as a firepowder charge.’

‘Hammer and tongs,’ Stenwold murmured, impressed. ‘And what were you intending to use it for?’

Totho pushed back his goggles, revealing two lighter circles in his grime-darkened face. ‘Weapons, sir.’

‘Weapons?’

‘Projectiles, sir.’ The life that had taken hold of him began to ebb a little. ‘That’s. . what I want to go into. If they’ll let me, sir.’

‘No worries there, Totho. If not here, then Sarn, perhaps. A Collegium-trained weaponsmith commands a high price there.’ The words rang a little hollow. Stenwold toyed with the air battery and put it down. ‘Ever fancy going to visit Helleron?’

The youth’s eyes went wide. ‘Yes, sir, of course.’ He probably dreamt about it longingly. In a warlike world, a fair proportion of the Lowland’s weapons were made in the foundries of Helleron, ranging from swords by the thousand to land-ironclads and siege artillery. The city of Helleron was the acknowledged queen of the industrial age, and produced almost everything that could be manufactured, but it was the arms trade she was best known for.

‘Well,’ said Stenwold, and let things hang there for a moment as he considered further. Tynisa and Salma he had absolutely no qualms about: they could look after themselves if things went wrong. But Totho here was an unknown quantity: a halfbreed, a quiet lad who kept very much to himself. He had only come to Stenwold’s attention at all because Cheerwell had needed to take some lessons in things mechanical, and it had been through Totho’s quiet help that she had passed her examinations. Still, Stenwold had been impressed by his conduct in the duel with Adax. Kymon might dismiss it as tedious, but Stenwold privately thought that Totho, who possessed little and had done better than he should, had proved rather more than Piraeus, who possessed a lot and had done worse than he might.