‘What is it?’ Gi-Had shouted.

‘Movement in the forest, surr. The enemy.’

‘To your stations!’ Gi-Had roared. People went in all directions. ‘How many enemy, soldier?’

‘At least six, surr.’

‘Six,’ the overseer muttered as he raced through the gates. ‘And they’re everywhere. It was no isolated band that attacked before. There’s a careful strategy behind this and we’re helpless to stop it. What are they really after? Our controllers or our artisans? Ah, poor Tiaan, I wouldn’t be in your boots for anything.’

They spent the afternoon and the whole night on edge. The lyrinx were sighted several times, and once their catapults sent boulders slamming into the walls, but they did not attack. In the morning there was no sign of them.

Gi-Had liked this no better. ‘Are they planning to attack, or trying to prevent us from getting Tiaan back?’

More hours were wasted while the clankers compacted a path to the mine and the village, so it was after noon by the time everyone assembled outside the gate, which was still being repaired.

There were sixteen in Irisis’s party, which was to be led by Sergeant Arple, a professional soldier who had come up from the barracks at Tiksi, along with a troop of ten infantry, all that could be spared from the city’s already undermanned garrison. They stood beside a scarred clanker. Its operator was handsome young Ky-Ara, whom Tiaan had once cast her eye over. His shooter was Pur-Did, a stocky man of nearly sixty years with warty hands and nostrils. His salt-and-pepper hair was shaved but for a ponytail at the back of his neck.

Two other groups stood by, each with a brand-new clanker, its operator, shooter and troop of ten soldiers. The party also comprised Perquisitor Jal-Nish, in overall command, Gi-Had his deputy, still under a cloud, Querist Fyn-Mah and a senior artificer. The civilians would travel with, or in, the clankers. Nish prayed that the machines were well made, for if anything went wrong he and the other artificer would have to fix it, brutal work in the weather they were expecting.

Light snow was falling as they formed up outside in their furs and fur-lined boots. The fall from the great blizzard had been tramped down as far as the mine, but beyond that they would have to ski.

The soldiers stood in their ranks, Arple in front. Beside them were Nish and the senior artificer, a tall, dark-skinned woman called Tuniz, a native of distant Crandor. She was long and lean, short-bodied and as slim-hipped as a youth. Her wiry brown hair, cut to the width of a fingernail all over, stood up straight on her head. An elongated neck bore dozens of enamelled bracelets and her teeth were filed to points, which gave her an unwarranted fearsome look when she smiled, which was often.

Next, almost as tall, stood Irisis, then slender Fyn-Mah and wiry Gi-Had. Irisis had placed herself as far as possible from the querist, making no effort to conceal her dislike. Fyn-Mah acted as though she had not noticed. By herself at the end was Ullii, quite the smallest person there. Dressed in her layers of winter gear she looked like a little barrel. A broad-brimmed hat covered her earmuffs, goggles and mask. Her face was enveloped in a balaclava of spider-silk. She was fidgeting, shifting from foot to foot.

Nish felt a painful knot in his belly. A dozen lyrinx could be the match of this force, in rough country. He could see his fear mirrored in the faces around him.

Gi-Had looked distracted, staring back at the gate and tapping one foot.

‘Our mission is a simple one,’ said Jal-Nish. ‘Artisan Tiaan has been captured by a lyrinx and we must get her back, whatever the cost. Whoever does so will be most handsomely rewarded. She has a talent this manufactory cannot do without.’

Irisis stamped one foot, making a loud clap. Jal-Nish gave her a warning glare.

‘How did this come about, surr?’ asked Arple, the sergeant. His upper lip was so deeply scarred and puckered that he looked like a man with two mouths, one above the other.

Gi-Had explained about the fight in the cavern and its grisly ending. The younger soldiers looked uneasy. ‘I sent Gull and Hurny on to warn the manufactory and returned a different way for Tiaan.’

‘A brave deed, surr,’ said Arple. ‘Not many have that kind of courage.’

‘I was terrified,’ Gi-Had admitted, ‘but I am her overseer. It was my duty.’

‘Get on with it,’ grated the perquisitor, who despised heroes. ‘Every minute the beast is carrying her further away.’

‘Tiaan was gone from the battle cavern,’ concluded Gi-Had. ‘And so was a lyrinx I’d thought dead. Her gear was gone too. It must have taken her.’

‘Why would it do that, surr?’ Arple plucked at that upper lip.

‘Perhaps they want her to teach them the craft of controller-making,’ said Jal-Nish. ‘We will take a shortcut through the mine. Once at the cavern, our seeker here,’ he nodded at Ullii, ‘will tell us where she’s gone. To your places, go!’

Before they had moved a dozen steps, someone came flying out the gate, crying, ‘Daddy, Daddy!’ It was a little, dark-haired girl of five or six, with red ribbons in her hair. Racing up to the overseer, she threw her arms about him.

As Gi-Had lifted her up, five older girls appeared, walking demurely in a graduated line. Each embraced their father, then went back into the line. A plump, pale woman stood in the gateway, looking distressed.

When she stepped forward the perquisitor snapped, ‘It’s not a party, probationary overseer. Get moving!’

Gi-Had took a step toward his wife, stopped, gave her a jerky wave then turned away. Her face crumbled. The littlest girl began to cry. Gi-Had, frozen-faced, did not look back.

Ullii was to go in the last clanker, along with Irisis, Nish, Ky-Ara and Pur-Did, his shooter, who except in the most severe weather rode on top, at his weapons.

She had not seen a clanker before and, wearing both mask and goggles, Ullii could not see it now. She did not need to – her other senses were on fire with its strangeness. It stank: the tang of pitch distillate, the odours of sludgy grease and rancid fish oil. It also smelled of metal, spicy rations and the acrid odour that always accompanied the working parts of clankers. However, the stench of the clanker was overwhelmed by that of the soldiers, now breaking from their ranks.

The clanker, though stationary, was surprisingly noisy. Its workings made a low, thudding tick just on the edge of hearing through her muffs, the sound as irritating as an itch between the shoulder blades. The flywheels whined, pipes hissed, and every so often came a rattle as of a knuckle across a washboard.

That was nothing to the way she sensed it. This close, the clanker made a glowing knot in her lattice too bright to imagine, and the knots of the other machines blurred into it. The knot arose from the hedron at the heart of the machine, which drew power from the field, channelling it into the controller that powered the huge flywheels and worked the levers, gears and shafts to drive the iron feet so tirelessly on.

Controller and hedron both drew on aspects of the Secret Art, though not those kinds that mancers employed, and both glowed in her lattice. Even after she turned the forward fan of her lattice away, Ullii could sense the hedron and feel the power, as she had felt the heat and light and blast from the furnaces when Nish led her past them this morning.

A scream rose in her throat. Ullii had an overwhelming urge to tear off muffs, mask and clothes, and curl up in the snow. That would make things worse, but the panic was rising so fast she could not hold it back. She took a shuddering breath.

A hand came up over the nose holes in her balaclava. It was Nish. Catching at his hand with her gloves, she pressed it over her nose. Her head steadied. She took another sniff, tipping up her face to him. ‘I’m better now,’ she said softly. She did feel better, though strange – hot and liquid inside. A nerve twitched in her lip.