The Escapement e-3

by K. J. Parker

  "I've already hardened and tempered the mandrel," he heard Daurenja say, and for a moment he couldn't think what he was talking about. "It's going to be tricky keeping the frames from burning through. We'll just have to make sure they're damped down all the time."

  A table, liberated from somebody's kitchen. On it lay eight pairs of tongs, sixteen sledgehammers, a big stone pestle and mortar, clay jars, rolls of three-sixteenth iron wire, a clutter of small, commonplace tools, a tinderbox, two fire-rakes, four wire brushes. "I think we've got everything," Daurenja was saying, and Ziani realised he sounded worried, the first time ever. It reminds me of something, Ziani thought, and realised it was two things, not one: preparations for an execution, and the midwife getting the kitchen ready, the day Moritsa was born.

  "Swage blocks," Ziani said. "You've forgotten the swage blocks."

  Daurenja shook his head. "Over there," he said, pointing into the shadows. "It's so dark in here you can't see them. Look, will somebody get some lamps lit, for crying out loud?"

  It'd have to be dark once they started, of course; they needed to be able to see the fine differences in the blinding white of iron at welding heat, and the soft glow of a single candle might be enough to deceive them. "Get the blocks over here by the hearth," Daurenja was telling someone. "And have the staves laid out in order, we don't want to be fooling about dry-fitting once we're up and running. And then you might as well get the fire lit. The sooner we start, the sooner we'll see."

  Someone picked up the tinderbox, but Daurenja took it from him. They were laying kindling in the middle of the pit; first small dry twigs and hay, then thin splinters of scrap planed wood stacked in a cone. Daurenja turned the tinderbox handle, blew on it, swore, called for more dried moss and shavings (Ziani smiled; he always had trouble getting a fire going himself). Someone leaned over his shoulder, offering to help, and was pushed out of the way. A little curl of smoke from the box. Daurenja took a long stride towards the pit and dumped the smouldering rubbish out of the box into the hole in the top of the stack of kindling. One of the bellows wheezed gently. An orange glow swelled and burst, like over-ripe fruit, into flames.

  Two men started shovelling charcoal, sprinkling it slowly on to the fire as the second bellows started up. Apparently satisfied, Daurenja turned his back on the fire-pit and shouted something Ziani couldn't catch over the huff and roar of the bellows. Four men dragged a long wooden box out of the shadows, and two of them stooped and lifted out an iron plate, bending their knees and straightening up under the weight. The plate was five feet long, about a handspan wide, two inches thick. They laid it down on the table and stepped back, as Daurenja darted forward to examine the edges.

  "Bloody rust," he shouted. "I thought I told you to keep the staves dry." He was scrubbing the edges with a small chunk of brick. "Got to keep the edges clean or the welds won't take." Someone handed him a clay pot, flux mixed with water to the consistency of thick porridge. He scooped out a thick blob with his finger, examined it and started smearing it on the freshly scrubbed edge.

  "In the fire," he snapped; two men clamped heavy tongs on the plate, locking the handles shut with rings, and heaved it into the lire-pit, while other men raked orange-hot charcoal over it until it was buried. The bellows sighed, provoking the fire into a wild outburst of flame. Five men were dragging up the massive square iron swage block. A wide groove, like a gutter but shallower, was cut into the upper face. Daurenja nodded to two of the men, and they each took a sledgehammer from the table. Daurenja himself lifted the top swage, a half-round bar on a long handle; it must have weighed forty pounds, but he moved it easily. He rested it in the groove on the top of the block, and peered into the fire as the third and fourth bellows started to blow, stirring up six-foot plumes of flame.

  "Keep the charcoal coming," Daurenja yelled. "Got to keep the heat even." Sweat was pouring out of his face, as though he was melting or leaking. "Right, that'll do, get it out."

  The iron plate rose out of the fire-pit like the sun rising, a blazing yellow shape that defeated the eye as it swooped down on top of the groove in the block. Daurenja set the curved face of the top swage down lengthways, exactly in the middle, and nodded to the hammermen, who started striking the swage's flat back, squeezing the hot, soft plate down into the groove, as the men with the tongs drew it down the block, an inch between the fall of each hammer blow. By the time they were halfway down, the bright yellow had faded to orange; Daurenja lifted the top swage clear, and the plate went back into the fire to heat up again. Men came forward to scrub clinker out of the groove with wire brushes.

  "You could have done this bit earlier," Ziani said. "You don't need me here for this."

  Daurenja swung round and looked at him as though he didn't recognise who was talking to him. "I'm sorry," he said, "but I wanted to keep the heat in the fire. Once this lot cools down…"

  It was a fair point, but Ziani made no sign of acknowledging it. "How many staves?" he asked.

  "Eight," Daurenja replied.

  "Fine. I might go outside for some air."

  But he stayed, as they swaged down all eight staves, quenched them, cleaned up and squared off the edges and laid them one at a time on the mandrel to make sure they fitted snugly on the curved face. He wasn't sure why; it was painfully noisy and unbearably hot, and there was nothing for him to do except stand still and quiet and admire the frightening intensity of Daurenja's concentration. For once, he felt no desire whatever to take part, not even to set a square or a pair of callipers on the quenched, fettled staves to test them for straightness or uniformity of thickness. He found his own reluctance disturbing, but couldn't decide why.

  "As near as makes no odds," Daurenja panted in his ear; which was his way of saying that the staves fitted together perfectly around the mandrel, their long edges lying so tight that the blade of a rule wouldn't slip in between them. Ziani nodded grudgingly (was it simple jealousy, he wondered; because this was the greatest, most ambitious piece of work he'd ever seen, and all he could do was watch? A part of it, yes, but only a small one), as Daurenja ordered the staves laid flat on the ground, dropped to his knees and began smothering the edges with flux. He worked quickly but with extraordinary care, verging on tenderness, like a mother feeding her baby some pulped-up mess with her fingers. Behind him, everybody was moving; carrying water, shovelling charcoal, damping down the mandrel, the tongs, the air-pipes, brushing off and sweeping up scale, grinding flux, laying out tools in order for the next stage, while Daurenja knelt beside the components of his dream like a man at prayer. Ziani glanced at him as he looked up, and saw that he was wide-eyed and pale with fear.

  He's vulnerable now, Ziani thought, for the first time ever. I could get to him now and hurt him. He thought about that, as unconsciously he counted the slow, even gasps of the bellows. A few sharp, insidious words to wreck his confidence, get him worrying; pretend to find fault or foresee a problem. He was so tense that the slightest thing would break him, like a single drop of water on the red-hot air-pipes. It was like watching a lover waiting for an answer (yes or no, like the gauges; either everything fits together or it doesn't), one man kneeling still and quiet while everything behind him was fire and movement. Two possibilities. A genuine choice.

  He tried to think straight. If Daurenja failed, what would he do? It was impossible to say. Valens would want to know, would want an informed and reasoned opinion, whether it'd be worth letting him try again, or whether the project was impractical, a waste of precious time and resources. But it wasn't about rational decisions; it was whether to kill the monster now, while he was weak, his guard down, stripped of his impenetrable armour by love and desire. It's the only thing he wants, Ziani thought, so is it better to stop him having it, or let him win his beloved and hope he'll be satisfied and go away?

  "Right," he heard him say, in a voice as hard and brittle as glass. "We've only got one chance. If anything goes wrong, we're screwed." He wasn't talking to anybody; he mouthed the words l
ike the responses in a religious service, a prayer, a general confession.

  Two of the staves were in the fire, buried under a glazed roof of glowing charcoal. Ziani forced himself to clear his mind. When the staves were white hot, at the precise moment when the surface but not the core of the iron was just starting to melt, they'd be hauled out of the fire and held on the mandrel side by side. In the two seconds during which the surfaces were still molten, they could be joined by firm but gentle hammering, little more than a brisk smack; and that was what Daurenja didn't know how to do.

  Success or failure; yes or no.

  Rather than choose, Ziani watched the fire, looking for the stray white sparks drifting lazily upwards out of the charcoal oven that would tell him the iron was approaching welding heat. Apart from the snoring of the bellows there was dead silence. They'd put the lamps out, so he could judge precisely the colour of the glowing iron. As he waited, he could feel the tension in his mind, yes or no, the gauge set on the work, and he desperately wished he knew the grounds on which he was supposed to decide.

  The sound of welding-hot iron is unmistakable; almost a crackle, almost a smacking of lips, against a background of hissing. Ziani took the rake from someone's hand and gently opened a window in the roof of shining coals. Almost immediately a spark shot up, bright as a star, burst and went out. He could hear the hiss but not the crackle. The problem was the thickness of the staves. Welding thin pieces was easy enough, so long as you didn't let them get too hot and burn; but thick pieces like these had to be welding-hot all the way through, or else the seam would be weak and false. The biggest risk lay in waiting too long once the sparks began to fly, burning the outside while waiting for the inside to run. Then there was dirt, rust or scale in the seam, which would stop the edges merging into one piece-the flux was meant to guard against that, but if you waited too long the flux would burn away, scale would start to form. Pull the staves out too soon, before the melt started, and you could hammer as hard as you liked and nothing would happen. He felt the skin on his forehead burn, and his eyes were bleached from staring into the painful brightness of the fire, but he found he couldn't move away, not until the moment came…

  (It was yes, then. He took it calmly, with resignation, putting the implications away at the back of his mind for later.)

  Seven plump white sparks soared up out of the fire, and the crackle was like snapping twigs. "Now," he heard himself yell. He felt a hammer-shaft in the palm of his hand-someone must've put it there-as the two staves rose up from the glowing heap, white as the moon. As they moved through the air towards the mandrel, he noted dispassionately the slimy, wet look of the surfaces where the iron was softening into liquid. Everything was perfect as the staves slid gently on to the mandrel and the edges to be welded nudged together and touched, needing only his gentle strokes, his caress, to join them inseparably for ever.

  I know how to do this, he thought as he lifted the hammer; not a prayer or an exhortation, a simple fact. He struck, and a shower of burning white stars, droplets of molten iron, shot up in front of his eyes like a fountain. He felt some of them on his cheeks, his wrists, the backs of his hands, melting his skin as he struck again, patting and squidging the wet staves together like a potter moulding clay. There were good smiths, excellent smiths, who never managed to learn the knack of the forge-weld, lacking the touch, the passion, the love. One blow slightly too hard would spring the joint before it had a chance to form; slightly too soft and the skin on the wet surfaces wouldn't burst and open up to each other. The sparks scattered and buzzed round him like furious bees, sweat flowed down his forehead and the bridge of his nose-one drop on the seam could ruin it, but he didn't dare wipe his face or move his head at all-while his arm rose and fell, his wrist delivering the delicate pecks, like kisses. People who believed in gods reckoned that a creator made the world. For a short while Ziani was prepared to believe in something like that; a god who gripped the Earth in mighty tongs, lifted it white hot out of the sun and joined its seams with careful, passionate taps, filling the night sky with sparks, somehow made sense; and whether he made it as a paradise for the righteous or a trap or a weapon had no bearing on the holiness of the moment when the edges fused into a seam, and the mountains sank hissing into the sea.

  "Well?" Daurenja's chin was on his shoulder. "Has it taken?"

  He didn't know; unbelievably, he wasn't even looking. "Too late now if it hasn't," he shouted back. "You'd better look for yourself, I can hardly see."

  Which was true enough. He closed his eyes, but the all-consuming white glare was still there. "It looks fine," Daurenja yelled in his ear. "It's taken, we're all right."

  Ziani opened his eyes, but he couldn't see anything. "Good," he said. "Now for the tricky bit. Get the mandrel in the fire, quick, before it takes cold."

  The tricky bit; because to weld on the remaining five staves and close up the final seam, they had to keep the piece he'd just welded at or just under welding heat for the rest of the procedure; and that, as far as Ziani knew, was impossible. Someone was pouring water over his head and shoulders; someone else was binding strips of soaking wet cloth round his forearms. They'd lifted the two staves he'd already joined off the mandrel and nestled them back into the fire, a little further out towards the edge, while the next stave was buried deep in the heart of the coals, close to the mouths of the four air-tubes. His forehead was already dry again. Someone took the hammer from his hand and quenched it in the water-filled trench. It hissed, and a round ball of steam drifted upwards.

  As he listened for the iron, he allowed his mind to wander. He tried to picture the City-the factory, his home, the Guild school, the house where he'd been born-but the light was too bright. So he searched in it for the faces of his wife and daughter, and found he couldn't quite form their shapes. They were two white pools, two pieces at welding heat, but however hard he tried (though the edges were clean as arrow blades and he was using blood as a flux), nothing he could do was quite enough to form a seam. Right at the heart of the fire was a cold spot. No matter how forcefully the bellows blew (they were piling on the charcoal, they were throwing on cartloads of sawn timber, wrecked wagons, smashed arrows, dead horses, dead men, whole cities, and each breath of the bellows bathed the fuel in white light and burned it away), still the cold spot was there, in his house, in her eyes, the night they came to search for the illegal mechanical doll. He could see it clearly now that the light had bleached his mind. He could see the door opening, the faces of strangers, a cold draught blowing into the warm house, lamplight on a halberd blade. I don't understand, she says; Ziani, what are they talking about, I don't understand. He understands, of course; he's guilty, he shares a truth with the strangers but not with his wife. He looks at her, sees fear and confusion and a refusal to believe, but something else as well, a cold spot. But it's a totally new procedure, an innovation, an abomination, and so he has no frame of reference, not until now, when he sees the same flaw in the white iron, and the two moments touch and weld…

  He was hammering. The sparks lashed his face like rain, and he couldn't tell for certain whether the salt he could taste as he licked his lips was sweat or tears or just the last of the salt bacon. But somehow the cold spot had collapsed; he pecked at the growing seam and watched the shadow inside the translucent iron wince, as liquid metal flowed from one piece into another. "It's taken," Daurenja howled, and quietly, in the back of his mind, Ziani agreed. Not a thunderbolt or a sudden stab of understanding; it was more that, when he probed the thought, like a man with toothache feeling with his tongue, he knew that he could no longer believe in what he used to believe. The cold spot was still there, as thought cooled and it became too late to make it good.

  It was her, the cold spot said. She told…

  The hissing again, like the voices of other people who knew something he didn't. Sparks; he could smell his own hair burning. "Now," he called out without even needing to look; and they dragged out the two pieces; seven eighths of a cyli
nder, and the missing eighth stave. There were a dozen men straining on the tongs now, staggering under the weight of the blurred white shape as they slid it over the mandrel like a sleeve and Daurenja laid the eighth stave gently on top. Two seams to make in one heat, there wouldn't be time. He worked them alternately, hardly thinking about what he was doing, going by the feel of the soft iron under the hammer, since he could no longer see. His face was raw from the heat, even the hammer's wooden handle was too hot to grip. His throat and lungs were burning, he was drowning in heat and light, but all he could think about was the cold spot, the flaw in everything. It was her, she told them; in which case…

  Suppose (in his mind, by contrast, it was bitter cold) he was Duke Valens. Suppose he found out that Ziani Vaatzes opened the gates of Civitas Eremiae. Just suppose. Needless to say, it would change everything. It was a cold spot in the war, a flaw in everything. But the war must be fought to the end, and without Ziani Vaatzes it couldn't be won, and so the cold spot had to be overlooked, the seam had to be closed up around it, he had to forget about it or pretend he didn't know it was there. Now (let's suppose) he's Ziani Vaatzes, staring at the cold spot in the heart of the white glow, knowing that everything he's done is unsound, so brittle that one tap in the right place will shatter it. If the cold spot had been in the first seam, or the second, the third, the fourth, fifth, sixth or seventh; but the eighth seam, as they shovel the last city on to the fire and lean on the bellows handles, with Daurenja standing over him twitching and whimpering with lust… The eighth and last seam, closing up the tube.

  "That's it." Daurenja's voice, raw as though the lining of his throat had been scraped with glass. "That's it, leave it, you've done it."

  "It's no good." Daurenja was trying to pull him away, take the hammer out of his hand. He struggled, put his hand on Daurenja's face and shoved him. "There's a cold spot. There's a fucking cold spot in the last seam."