Malien rolled over, touching a globe to the faintest light. ‘What on earth is the matter?’

Tiaan thrust the pouch at her. ‘The amplimet was blinking furiously but as soon as I opened the pouch it stopped. Now it’s doing it again.’

Malien shot up in bed and touched out the light. The flickering glow could be seen through the pouch, and when she lifted the flap, again it stopped.

She slid her legs out of bed, pulled on her boots and shrugged a cloak around her. ‘Come with me. Leave it here.’

Tiaan sat the pouch on the table beside the bed. ‘What is it, Malien?’

‘I don’t know. I’ve never seen anything like it before. I think –’

‘What?’ Tiaan had to trot to keep up.

‘Let’s just see, without prejudice. How does the field look to you?’

‘I can’t see it. I left my hedron down in the construct.’

Malien shook her head and walked faster. Tiaan ran after her. The tunnel to the Well was now distinctly warm. At a sweep of Malien’s fist, the cubic barrier smashed into shards that vaporised in the air. The mist in the conical chamber whirled higher and faster, and the light from the shaft now had an oily green tinge. Moonlight, or an exhalation from the Well?

Malien was standing at the brink, her toes over the edge. She was breathing hard.

‘It looks the same to me,’ Tiaan panted.

‘It’s not!’

‘Is it –?’ Tiaan peered down fearfully.

Malien laid a hand on her shoulder. ‘It’s not as bad as I thought. It’s still bound – just! And …’

‘What, Malien?’

‘I think the amplimet is communicating with it.’

‘What’s it saying?’

Malien looked her up and down, wordlessly.

Stupid question. Communication between a woken crystal and a frozen whirlpool of force might take any form. And might have any purpose.

‘You’d better get back to work,’ Malien said abruptly. ‘And hurry.’

Tiaan turned away. Malien did not move. ‘Are you coming?’

‘I hardly dare,’ said Malien. ‘I’ll have to keep watch. Run, this is an emergency!’

Tiaan thought through her problem on the way back. She needed to choke down the flow, yet allow more power through when the construct was further from the node. What if she set the amplimet in a golden box, to contain the aura, but with a rotor at the open end, powered by the flow from the field? The blades, also made of gold, would lie flat. If there was not enough power to spin the rotor, the power would come though. Once the rotor began to turn, the golden blades would rise into position, choking down the flow. Tiaan was sure it would work. It had to – she desperately wanted to make this construct go.

The fabrication was painfully slow but she dared not rush it – the box must seal perfectly and the rotor work every time.

In the afternoon she was so tired that she had to take a nap. She dozed for an hour and roused to find her cheeks damp with tears of longing. She had dreamed that the construct was hers.

By that evening she had built a golden box and assembled her rotor. Tiaan put the boxed amplimet into the tube and closed the cap. Now she saw a field, though it was not the one she normally used. This was different, flatter, weaker; and probably just as well.

The hum resumed. It was lower now, more like the sound the constructs had made when she first encountered them. There was no thumping. Tiaan experimented with the buttons, which did no more than change the images on the green glass. She played with the finger-shaped levers. One lit up the area all around the construct, another changed the sound of the mechanism below from a hum to a whine, a third opened the turret behind her with a whirr-click.

A fourth shook the machine, which slowly rose in the air until it stood hip height above the floor. At last! Tiaan’s heart crashed painfully about her ribcage. Now, if she could just get it to move.

She wiggled the studded knob on the trumpet-shaped lever and was hurled sideways as the machine spun like a top. Her arm grew so heavy that she could barely hold it up. Forcing with all her strength, she managed to push the knob the other way but as the rotation slowed she went off-balance, forcing the trumpet further over.

The construct spiralled sideways across the floor, directly towards one of the main roof pillars. She jerked the knob. The machine spun the other way. Tiaan let out a screech. Her brain seemed to be spinning inside her skull. Each new movement sent the machine a different way. As it whirled toward another pillar, Tiaan saw Malien with her hands cupped around her mouth. What was she trying to say?

Tiaan could not hear a thing. The machine was out of control, spinning so fast that everything became a blur. She felt herself losing consciousness.

Golden sparkles burst in her eyes and the whine stopped. Malien must have cut off her view of the field. The machine came to rest just a handspan from the pillar. Tiaan climbed out, reeled about drunkenly and collapsed on the floor.

‘That was the funniest thing I’ve seen in a long time,’ Malien chuckled.

‘I’m glad you think so,’ Tiaan choked. ‘I could have wrecked it in the first minute.’ As she sat up, the world tilted, so Tiaan lay down again. ‘I don’t feel very well.’

‘It’ll pass. Tiaan, a construct is not a clanker. Strength with delicacy is the hallmark of our work, whether it be a bridge spanning the mightiest of abysses, or a dressmaker’s needle. The gentlest movements are all it takes to control a construct.’

‘I’m not sure I want to control one,’ said Tiaan, feeling as though she was being lectured.

‘I know you do,’ said Malien. She placed one hand on the flank of the machine. ‘There’s something strange about it.’

‘What’s that?’

‘Except for the fitting out and the turret at the back, it’s just like the one Rulke made two hundred years ago.’

‘I suppose the Aachim copied his design.’

‘We are artists first, engineers or craft workers second. We never make the same object in the same way twice, yet these three constructs are almost identical. From what you say, the others were too.’

Tiaan recalled the images to mind. ‘They were all sizes, but the shape was always the same. So what?’

‘It suggests that they didn’t dare make changes, because they had copied what they did not understand. Not the way Rulke did.’

‘What are you trying to say?’

‘Rulke’s construct didn’t just hover, it flew through the air. I saw it with my own eyes.’

The freedom of the skies! How she wanted it. Tiaan bit down on those feelings. ‘Maybe so, but all the cleverness of the Aachim has failed to uncover that secret.’

‘Perhaps they were looking in the wrong place.’

‘What are you up to, Malien? Do you hope I will solve it for you?’

Malien laughed, though it had an odd ring to it. ‘My adventuring days are well behind me.’

They returned to the machine. ‘What I don’t understand,’ Malien continued, ‘is how they could have rebuilt it. I saw Yggur’s blast pass across the void and turn Rulke’s construct into a glowing cinder. We all did, who were there that fateful day. How could they recover its design after such ruin?’

She answered her own question. ‘Metalmancy. They used mancery to recover the form and purpose of every part of it. That must have been a labour indeed, though they had two hundred years to do it, and the resources of a world. But even metalmancy could not have recovered the most fragile parts.

‘They never saw it used,’ Malien mused. ‘Not the way I did. Rulke’s machine was as hot as a furnace beneath, after it had flown.’

‘The Aachim constructs weren’t hot,’ said Tiaan. ‘They passed over snow and ice without melting it.’

‘Did they now! Vithis can’t have discovered the secret of flight at all.’ Malien turned away. ‘I’m going back to check on the Well.’

Tiaan, consumed by the thought of flight, the ultimate secret, hardly noticed her going.