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.

‘I’m travelling that way in a few days’ time,’ he informed the youth, as idly as he could. ‘I might have some work there that a few young hands could help me with. So do you want to come?’

He had expected an instant, eager affirmation, but Totho squeezed just a little more respect out of him by weighing up the offer carefully.

‘Sir, will Che – Cheerwell – be going as well?’

Stenwold frowned a little. ‘I hadn’t planned it-’

‘Yes. Yes, I will,’ Che told him, from the doorway behind. ‘I don’t care what you say, you can’t keep me here.’

When Stenwold spun round he found her standing there with clenched fists, her courage screwed up to the hilt, more evidently ready for a fight than she had ever seemed in the Prowess Forum.

Stenwold closed his eyes resignedly. For all her shortcomings, the girl had timing. ‘Totho, would you-?’

‘You can say what you’ve got to say in front of him,’ Che told him. ‘I want to go. I want to do whatever it is you’re doing.’ She was standing there fiercely in her best white College robe amidst the sparks and grime.

Stenwold turned on her. ‘Absolutely not,’ he said, his face leaden.

She confronted him defiantly with her hands on her hips, a solid young Beetle-kinden girl. A College scholar. My niece.

‘I am a part of this,’ she insisted.

‘Cheerwell, you don’t even know what “this” is,’ he said reasonably. ‘I am just going east on business, nothing more.’

‘Business that includes Toth and Salma, and… and Tynisa, but not me?’ She had wanted to be so calm about this, to pick him apart with clever words, but now he was here, now he was here talking with Totho, like some clandestine recruiting officer. She found that she was losing it. Quietly, the studious artificers were creeping out of the room. Only Totho had not moved, staring somewhere at the ground behind Stenwold.

‘What I’m about, it’s best you don’t know,’ he tried.

‘But you can tell everyone else? All my friends, but not me?’ And suddenly she realized it was all going to come out. All of it, that she had been stewing, was just going to vomit out of her. ‘Not me, though, is it? Never me. Please, Uncle Sten, I want to go. I want to do what you’re doing. I know it’s important.’