Then, aged sixteen, came the catastrophe. After his examination there had been hurried conferences and, with no more than an hour’s notice, his parents had shipped him across the mountains to become a prentice artificer at this godforsaken manufactory. Nish was devastated. It did not occur to him that the move might have saved him from the army. Their only instruction had been to ‘Keep your eyes and ears open, and write about what you see and hear, every day’. Nish was a dutiful son. He still wrote every day, and once a month his bulky letter would go out with the other mail.

His first year at the manufactory had been a nightmare. All the other prentices, male and female, had been taller. His skin erupted into hideous spots. Worse, he knew less about being an artificer – the design, constructing, operating and repairing of machines of warfare – than even the six-year-old factory kids. But worst of all, rumour spread that he had failed disastrously as a scribe and had been sent here as a last resort. If he failed again he would become a pit labourer, as good as a slave.

Nish could not bear that. It was the most powerful motivation of all. He was determined to succeed at being an artificer, no matter what it took. Though he had little aptitude for the craft, he would master it.

What he lacked in ability and experience, Nish made up with hard work and sheer, directed intelligence. He worked night and day until he was so exhausted that he could have slept standing. He drove his supervisors mad with questions, had them show him the workings of the war engines over and again, and invented ways of teaching his reluctant fingers what the other prentices learned easily.

At the end of his first year he was ranked among the lowest of the prentices, along with the stupid and the chronically lazy. But he was not the lowest, and to Nish that was a major achievement. If his parents were impressed, they did not say so in their infrequent letters. Nish was hurt, but planned to try even harder next year.

After two years, he was around the middle of the group. That earned grudging praise from his mother and a call to come home to celebrate his eighteenth birthday. He worried in case they had another change of profession for him, perhaps sending him to the army. His imagination and his wide reading told him exactly what war was like. He did not want to experience it – at least, not on the battlefield.

When he got home Nish discovered that his father was the one who’d changed profession. Jal-Nish was now a perquisitor, charged with rooting out troublemakers, subversives and traitors wherever he might find them. It was an important, lavishly paid position, answering only to the scrutator for Einunar. One day he might even be scrutator.

At the end of his third year Nish had moved above the middle of the prentices, but there, to his intense chagrin, he stayed. Sheer intelligence and hard work, no matter how well directed, could raise him no further, for he simply lacked the aptitude for artificing. It galled him, but Nish was nothing if not self-aware and wrote to his father telling him so, and expressing the wish that he might go back to being a merchant’s scribe.

His father showed neither surprise nor disappointment. Jal-Nish merely wrote, ‘You’re doing well. Don’t forget to write, every day.’

Nish bent his head to the clanker parts he had been wrestling with all morning. They formed the lower half of a mechanical-leg assembly, and putting it together was a job he particularly hated. The parts had been made in a dozen different sections of the manufactory and if any one was infinitesimally out of tolerance the assembly became a nightmare. Sometimes he spent days on the most tedious work only to find that one part had to be machined again, and all his labour undone.

He banged the housing with a dirty fist. He was covered in grease, as always. Nish hated that – he liked to look his best. The women of the manufactory tended to sneer at artificers, mere ‘fitters’ as they called them, because it was such a filthy job. Many of the fitters were women, and they were friendly enough, but Nish disdained them. Artificers were beneath him, though he was one himself. He looked to the top of the heap, where he belonged.

At that moment Tiaan walked by. Most respected in this manufactory were the artisans. They worked with their hands, but only with precious things: gold and silver, platinum and quicksilver, copper, amber and crystal. They never got dirty doing it and the best were brilliant, lateral-thinking designers. More importantly, artisans worked with their senses. They had special talents, akin to the Secret Art that was the province of mages and mancers.

Nish could never hope to be an artisan; he lacked the vital talent. But prestige was everything to him and he wanted one of them for his woman. There were four artisans here, though only two were available. Of those, Irisis went by the fitters with her nose in the air, for she was of the House of Stirm, a crafter’s daughter and a crafter’s niece, made for better things than a lowly artificer. Nish hated her for it, but he understood her too. She was much like him.

Tiaan was a different matter. He felt that he might be in love with her. Now he looked up to see Tiaan on her way back. Putting down his wrench, he stared at her. She was above him, and yet beneath, for she came from the breeding factory and did not know her father. To lose a father was commonplace, in these times. Not to know his identity was a major failing in a world obsessed with family and Histories.

Tiaan carried her head high, though not aloof as Irisis did. Tiaan seemed oblivious to her surroundings, as if the only world that mattered was inside her head. The Ice Virgin, some called her, but Nish knew better. He felt he understood her too. She had the reputation as the hardest worker in the manufactory, and the cleverest. She was trying to make up for something. Was it her unfortunate birth? Her lack of a father?

She wore loose trousers and a blouse of grey flax, with old but well-cared-for grey boots. More was not tolerable here, just across from the furnaces. Her breasts bobbed with her light step, a sight that liquefied his middle. Desire made him forget everything.

Do it now! She’s a quiet little thing. She will listen and be flattered. He hesitated too long. Without a glance, without even knowing he was there, Tiaan went by. She wore a faint, internal smile. Her glossy black hair bounced against the back of her neck.

Soon she would turn the corner and be gone, down to her own workroom in the cold part of the manufactory. Go on, you fool! Today you have something to offer. Not even the Ice Virgin will refuse you now. She has the breeding factory in her blood and her belly. She’s just holding out for the best offer, and no one can best you.

Dropping his tools on the bench, Nish wiped his greasy hands on a rag and ran after her, up the aisle and round the corner to the section where the artisans and all the other clean crafts worked. Inside, the artisans’ workshop was sealed off by double doors designed to exclude all dust and dross.

Tiaan was already out of sight. He burst through the doors without putting on a clean overall or taking off his filthy boots. Everyone stared. He did not notice.

‘Tiaan!’ he cried. ‘Artisan Tiaan!’

She was going through the door into her own cubicle, but turned at his wild cry. ‘Yes?’

He ran up to her, froze, then forced the words out.

‘Tiaan, I admire your work tremendously. I … I think you are the most brilliant woman I’ve ever met.’

For an instant he saw panic in her eyes. Anger covered it up. ‘If you admire it so much,’ she said frostily, ‘why are you dropping your filth and grease everywhere?’

Recalling the state of his clothes, he flushed. Sheer desperation propelled him on. ‘I’m sorry, I’ll clean it up.’