Engn II

X

XThe wind blowing off the plains whipped the tails of Adage's robes around. Reflected in the silvery walls of the Hub behind him, he resembled a black flame burning in the heart of the machine.

He pulled the robes more tightly around him. They needed higher walls around the machine, not just to keep the people in but to keep the damned wind out. When it blew from the north like this, it froze his ancient bones into rods of cold iron within his flesh.

His three silent companions didn't appear to feel it. Of course. Their home lay far to the north. Adage had never been to No, their distant city, but he'd heard much about it. Far beyond the plain, over unknown mountains. A place of permanent snow. A city built upon the ice of a frozen lake. Upon a frozen ocean, others said. Some even claimed No moved around, hauled along on enormous runners by titanic moving engines. Others said its buildings and walls were constructed from blocks of ice rather than stone. Or that there were in fact lots of cities, all fuelled by fire sucked from the ground.

Well, perhaps. Adage chose not to believe most of what people said about the Lords of the High Ice, but the undeniable truth was they troubled him. Despite all his public assurances. If there was one flaw in the great design, one speck of grit in the smooth running of the machine, it was their reliance on the cold, strange northerners with their incomprehensible arts and their secret machines. He reassured himself the contingency plans known only to a select few of the masters would be there if ever they were needed. The construction of Gargantua, the alternative containment engine, was a large draw on their resources and numbers but, they'd decided, a necessary one, in case the worst came to the worst.

For many years the Lords of the High Ice hadn't taken sides in the Clockwork War. They'd watched, aloof, while the armies of the old guilds and the new battled each other and slaughtered each other. Some whispered they were simply waiting for the two sides to wipe each other out so they could claim the lands for themselves; others, that they were secretly directing the entire war for purposes of their own. Adage doubted it. The Lords he talked to were uninterested in the affairs of others, seemed concerned only with their own ancient arts and practices. So Adage told himself, anyway.

And what those ancient practices might be, Adage had no idea. The Lords weren't a guild or a city-state. He had no idea what they made, what they did up there in the frozen north. What they were. He did, at least, know the reason for their sudden involvement. For their offer of mechanized soldiers and weaponry and all their mechanical marvels. From where he stood, he could see the power lines snaking across the plain into the distant north, carrying the electrical current the seismium containment engine generated. Vast amounts of free energy, safely generated far from their own lands where any accident wouldn't be able to harm them. That was the deal. They didn't need to know the truth, of course. Even if they did – and Adage sometimes wondered – the arrangement still made sense. Free electricity for decades and centuries to come, even if, one distant day, the flow inexplicably cut off.

“The engines are working?” one of the Lords asked him. “The particle is now fully contained?” It was the woman, the tallest of the three. She wore the robes of the Switchers Guild, but the disguise really didn't work. She was at least a foot taller than any Switcher he'd ever met. He also hadn't met any with blond hair braided with silver and plaited all the way down their back. Plaits that swayed and spat like serpents when they moved. And no one from the city-states ringing the great plain had such steely blue eyes, eyes that never seemed to blink as they studied you. Adage just hoped the masters of the old guilds were sufficiently foolish not to notice. Which, so far, they had been.

“All working,” said Adage. “Containment pressure is at ten thousand pounds per square inch, as instructed.”

“From all six machines?”

“All six.”

The woman nodded. “Very well. We will go inside and see.”

Sometimes he couldn't be sure if they were giving him orders or simply didn't know polite forms of wording. He preferred to believe the latter, but he fervently wished he understood the technologies they'd been given a little better. He'd asked for explanations, of course, for technical details, for calculations and projections. But the Lords of the High Ice would only smile and shake their heads. Do you give away your guild secrets? No. You keep the hidden knowledge of how to channel electrical sparks, or how to build machines that know the time of day, to yourselves. You keep your secrets and we will keep ours.

And there was nothing any of them could say to that, because it was true. Adage would defend the secrets of his own guild to the death. As they all would. Still, he wished he understood the details of what the vast machineries they were constructing actually did. And how they did what they did.

The four of them walked beneath the ram of the northern containment engine, the smooth steel of its vast piston as big as half the sky up above them. Adage could see no movement in the ram, but he could feel the raw power thrumming through it. It frightened him and delighted him in equal measure. The huge pressures the rams maintained were incredible. Thirty-six great steam engines powered the axles that in turn maintained this one ram in its state of unrelenting, straining pressure. The ram that was, at the same time, forced outwards by the particle, allowing it to capture the excess energy. The gearing to balance all that thunderous power onto the worm drive of this single ram took up a building in its own right. A building of roaring, screaming, furious metal always one moment away from explosion. And this was only one of the six.

The northern, southern, eastern and western rams were impressive enough. It was the engineering required to complete the underground and sky rams that dazzled Adage. They sky ram alone had taken five years to design. Now it towered above them, and all that pressure was brought to bear by the vast arm of the biggest beam-engine the world had ever seen. The arm was the single largest steel object ever cast. By some margin. They'd designed and constructed towering cranes to just lift it up there. And employed large cranes to erect the vast cranes.

The whole construction was truly a triumph, a marvel. And each time he looked at it, the unfocused anxiety flared within Adage's stomach. He knew in vague terms what everything did, but never with the intimate understanding he had of how a clock functioned. He could identify the precise purpose of each spring and cog and spindle in a timepiece. Why it was laid out as it was, how each component connected to each other in just that way. With the containment engine he had only his faith it would all work. And faith was a poor substitute for facts and equations and knowledge.

They walked past the three iron-clad guards protecting the northern doorway and into the echoing space. Each of the six compression rams penetrated one side of the cube, meeting in the distant centre high above their heads. To Adage, used to the minutiae of clock cogs and escapements, the sheer brute scale of this place felt oppressive, a weight bearing down on him. The rams tapered as they approached the centre, focusing the power, amplifying the pressure so they resembled some metal star, captured and caged in the great building.

Could steel really withstand such pressures? It had so far, but that didn't mean much. Metal failed eventually. Fatigue, rust, fractures. And although the current pressures were huge, they were nothing compared to those they'd see during the next Event. Would the rams work then? Or would they c***k and fail? He was almost glad he wouldn't be alive to see it. Not for the first time he found himself regretting the whole thing. Regretting the terrible machine they had wrought.

They stopped beneath the tiny, dice-sized particle held between the diamond tips of the six rams. Adage peered upwards. His sight was weak these days, even with the eyeglasses the Guild of Lensmen had crafted for him. He could see a grey smudge, nothing more. Such a tiny amount. Yet this was the total amount they'd recovered from the huge pits excavated beneath the workings. A dice-sized cube. And he didn't like to play with dice, didn't like games of chance. He preferred cold, hard certainty.

“You're sure it's enough seismium?” he asked of his companions. “You're sure this is all it will take?”

The three Lords of the High Ice stood there with him beneath the particle, also gazing up, murmuring together in their incomprehensible language. Adage saw glances pass between them. Was it his imagination, or was there anxiety in those eyes of ice? Once again, he had the uncomfortable feeling they weren't telling him everything.

“It is enough,” said one of the men. “We have calculated very precisely, constructed very carefully. So long as containment is maintained, all will be well. We will all have the electricity we need. The power will flow, and you will be quite safe.”

There it was again, the language barrier. Did the northerner mean quite safe or completely safe? His blue eyes were impossible to read as he looked at Adage.

“The machinery must be maintained, yes?” the northerner continued. “The pressures will increase over time. There will be periods of calm and periods of convulsion. There will be minor surges all through the cycle, then a long dormancy before the Event. The exponential peak of the energy cycle every three hundred and seventeen years. This is how it works. You must ensure the machine holds even as it extracts the energy. As it contains the frozen explosion.”

“We will make sure,” said Adage.

“And contains it forever,” said the woman, the note of warning clear even in her foreign accent. “Not for a few years or decades. Forever. An agglomeration of seismium this big. If containment was lost at the wrong moment…”

“Yes, yes,” said Adage. “We understand. We will build the machine ever bigger and more powerful to hold the particle. You'll get your flow of electricity, have no fear.”

“Very well.” The satisfied look on her face troubled him for reasons he couldn't quite put his finger on. They should all be satisfied. It had taken them decades to get to this point. They should be celebrating. Everything was in place. Still, it gnawed at him.

“Well,” said Adage. “I will leave you in peace. You will be returning home to No soon?”

The man who had spoken glanced up at the particle and then back at Adage. “Oh yes, we will be leaving very soon. The sooner the better, in fact.”

Back outside in the chill of the wind, Adage stopped for a moment to collect his thoughts. He tried to push his lingering suspicions about the Lords of the High Ice to the back of his mind. This had all been sorted out years ago. The meetings and plots and pacts. Now all they had to do was wait. Wait and make sure the secrets were passed down the line of Directors in readiness.

And make sure, also, the secrets remained secrets until that day. By the doorway, a plaque had been bolted onto the stone of the wall, bearing the name of the building. Seismium Containment Engine. There were signs like it all around the machine, but this one suddenly seemed far too obvious. It was rare to see a master of one of the Temple Guilds there in the Hub, but they couldn't be prevented going where they pleased. This was supposed to be their machine after all, built for their benefit. It wouldn't do for one of them to start asking what this containment engine actually contained. They'd already had enough trouble. Machinery being attacked and wrecked by those who didn't understand it and were therefore afraid of it. It couldn't be allowed.

He turned to the three guards, standing in the chill wind. “You. I want this sign removed immediately. Then go around all the other entrances and remove the signs there, too. Understand?”

The guards nodded, looked to each other, then turned to examine the sign. It was a painted steel plaque, the letters embossed upon it and picked out in gold.

“We'll need tools,” said one of the guards, his voice muffled by the adapted forge worker helmets they all wore.

“No time,” said Adage. “It doesn't matter if you break the thing; I just want to see it removed. Immediately.”

As well as their muskets, the guards carried steel staves with sharpened edges. They slid them behind the sign, attempting to lever it off the wall. They had to work together; the sign was well secured. They worked away for several minutes, buckling the sheet of metal before, with a ripping clang, sheering right through it. A section containing part of the name, some of the letters from Containment, hung loose. More minutes of twisting and flexing and the guards managed to work the fragment free.

“Good,” said Adage. “Keep going.”

He watched as they laboured to pull off more and more letters, ripping the metal sign to jagged shards. Despite the iron chill of the wind, Adage stood watching. In a few minutes there were only a few scraps of the original sign left.

“Wait,” he instructed. “Stop there.”

The guards stepped back, their chests heaving from their labours. Adage considered what was left behind. Four letters from Engine. Eng n.

It would do. Some sign was better than no sign. No sign at all might make the Temple masters suspicious. This, on the other hand, sounded plausible but didn't convey any of the dangerous meaning of the original. If someone were to ask questions, they could easily invent some story of what Engn might mean. An ancient spelling or an abbreviation. Some overcomplicated puzzle to dazzle and confuse them.

“Good,” he said. “Talk to Master Dragus. We want new signs for all the entrances, each of them saying that. That and nothing more. Understood?”

Once again, the guards looked to each other, unsure, but none dared refuse. Adage wasn't their guildmaster, but Dragus, who was, would never dare ignore a direct instruction from Adage.

Satisfied, Adage turned and walked away.

Engn. Yes. He liked it.

Not far away, the newly installed steam-powered rail carriage stood waiting, sending billowing blooms of grey smoke up into the cold air. He turned and…

The sudden bang and flash of light made Finn, Diane and Whelm jump back from the seeing orb. A plume of grey smoke rose from the inner workings of the spindle reader. An acrid smell of burning filled the air, prickling Finn's nose and the back of his throat.

Diane reacted first. A can of water for the chickens stood by her on the floor. She picked it up and hurled it onto the smoking device. Seeing what she was doing, Whelm put his arm up to try and stop her, but it was too late. There was a crackle and fizz of electrical sparks, the sharp c***k of glass breaking and then silence. The seeing orb went dark.

“What are you doing?” asked Whelm, the shock clear in his voice. “All the electrics will be ruined.”

“It was on fire,” said Diane. “It was going to burn the whole building down.”

Whelm looked horrified. “It was just a bit of smoke. Now look at it. It'll never work again. The glass is cracked.” He looked to Finn in exasperation, clearly expecting him to agree. Diane looked at Finn too, one eyebrow raised. They both waited for him to take their side.

Couldn't they see it wasn't important? The images they'd seen had made that obvious. That was the Hub, clearly enough. But something had gone wrong. Somewhere over the years, it had all gone wrong. The machinery had fallen into ruin, but it was still dangerous. Terribly dangerous. And Connor had seen that, understood that. He'd uncovered some surviving threat and he'd needed help to prevent it. He'd needed their help to complete the destruction. And he'd given Finn the spindle to explain everything.

“Finn?” said Diane. “Tell him. Tell him it's time he left. We're grateful for what he's done, but now it's time for him to move on.”

Everything was a confused jumble in Finn's mind. Recent events in the valley. The visions in the orb. Like the old master in the moving images, he couldn't see how the parts connected. How they worked. But one thing was clear.

Finn looked at both of them. “No. Don't you see? It doesn't matter. Because we must go back. We have to go back to Engn.”