The smell of iron filings and vinegar hung thick in the air of the Vyrn foundry, cold enough to turn their panting breath to gray smoke. Tihana had dragged him there on a handcart lined with dry burlap, her palms raw and bleeding from the hemp ropes. Rytis lay upon an iron trestle table, shivering so violently his teeth clattered like dice in a cup. Black bile pooled in the hollow of his collarbone, thick and foul, sluggishly sliding over graying skin. His trench-coat was soaked through with sweat that carried the sharp stench of rotting river weeds. "Look at me," Tihana said. Her voice lacked its bright lilt. The sweet, vacant curve of her lips had vanished, leaving behind two thin lines of chalk. She plunged a clean cloth into boiled rainwater, wringing it until her knuckles showed white bone. She scrubbed his chest, wiping away the dark discharge, but another fit seized him. The cough ripped through his frame like shrapnel, his back arching off the iron plate. A spurt of black phlegm sprayed across the front of her apron. Tihana froze. For five years she had curtsied when aunts mocked her patched hems. She had giggled like a brainless goose while Danica took her mother’s sapphire combs and sold them to pay for pastry chefs. When the sanitarium guards spat in her tea, she had asked if they needed more sugar. Now, staring at the stain on her bib, something snapped inside her ribs. A sound broke from her mouth—not a polite chuckle, but an ugly, strangled wail that tore the lining of her throat. "No," she choked out, dropping the cloth. "No, you don't get to do this. You don't get to rot in a ditch after making me buy a damn foundry." She fell against his chest, her forehead pressing against his clammy collarbone. The tears came ugly, hot, and unchecked, soaking through his coarse linen shirt. Her shoulders heaved as years of choked laughter gave way to harsh, ragged sobs. She gripped the rough wool of his trousers with both hands, anchoring herself to a dying man. "Don't leave me with them," she wept into the crook of his neck. "Lovre can't take it. I can't do it alone. I can't keep smiling, Rytis. I hate it. I hate all of them. Please." A rough, calloused touch brushed her temple. Tihana stopped breathing. She lifted her head, her face blotched and streaked with salt and coal grime. Rytis was awake. His gray irises, sunken deep within violet hollows of exhaustion, were fixed entirely on her. There was no mockery in his expression, no bitter sneer. His sole remaining hand—scarred by acid burns and calloused from steel carving—shook as he raised it toward her face. His thumb pressed against her cheekbone, dragging away a warm tear. The skin of his hand was rough as river sandstone. "You're crying," he murmured. His voice sounded like dry leaves crushed under an iron boot. "You never cry. You laugh... like a lark that swallowed a needle." "I am not a lark," she whispered, leaning involuntarily into the broad heat of his palm. "I am a coward who smiles so people won't hit her." "Not a coward." He swallowed hard, his throat clicking. His fevered skin radiated heat now, the sickness burning through him in waves. His gaze drifted past her, toward the high, soot-blackened rafters of the factory roof. "I saw your father run from the redoubts at Karst Trench. Twelve years back. He had three medals pinned to his tunic, and he threw his pistol in the mud so he could sprint faster toward the supply wagons." Tihana went still. "You knew my father?" "I was nineteen. Third Sapper Division," Rytis muttered, his eyes unfocused, lost in the sulfuric smoke of an older nightmare. "A mortar shell took the bunker beam. It fell across your father's spine. He was screaming for his daughters. Begging anyone to pull him out so he could see his little girls grow up. Danica. Tihana. Over and over." A dry cough racked him, but his fingers remained hooked into Tihana’s sleeve. "I levered the timber with an iron rail," he rasped. "The timber held. The second shell didn't. The blast sheared my left sleeve right at the socket. When the field surgeons dragged us onto the cart, your father told the tribunal commander that he had freed himself. Said I was just an enlisted boy who panicked and lost a limb to carelessness. They gave him a pension. They gave me half a loaf of bread and a wooden pin." A bitter taste flooded Tihana's tongue. Her father's noble pension had paid for Danica’s debutante dresses and Ignas's university tuition. Her family’s very survival had been bought with the meat of this man’s shoulder, a debt swept under the carpet like ash. "Rytis..." she breathed, her throat aching. "Listen to me," he cut in, his grip tightening on her arm with sudden, fevered vigor. The haze in his eyes cleared, replaced by a searing clarity. "The black discharge means the rot has reached the lungs. It isn't a four-week decline anymore. The river water has seeded the lower wards. We have five days. Maybe six before the lungs liquefy." "I don't know how to cast the pipes," she said, panic fraying the edges of her voice. "I only bought the stone and the coal. You are the architect. You have to live to build it." "Take off your glove." "What?" "Your hand, Tihana. Give it to me." She stripped off the stained leather mitten and held out her trembling right hand. Rytis reached into his coat pocket with trembling fingers, withdrawing a stub of blue carpenter's chalk. He pulled her palm flat against his chest. Slowly, with exquisite precision despite his shivering frame, he began to draw across her skin. "The municipal pumps rely on basic gravity feed," he wheezed, dragging the chalk over the heel of her hand. "It leaves the microbial silt suspended in the basin. You cannot kill it with fire, and you cannot poison it with silver salts without killing the drinker. You must separate it by mass." The chalk scraped against her lifeline, drawing three concentric rings connected by curved spokes. "A steam-centrifuge," he rasped, his breath hot against her knuckles. "A vertical turbine inside a sealed brass casing. The boiler forces the water into a vortex at four hundred rotations a minute. The heavy silt is thrown to the perimeter wall and drains through lower weep-holes. The pure core rises through the center spindle. Here. And here." He pressed the chalk hard into the center of her palm, snapping the tip. The blue pigment ground into the ridges of her flesh. "The patterns are in the cedar crate under the floorboards of the shack," he said softly, his eyes fluttering shut as the effort drained him. "Every angle. Every gear ratio. If my lungs fill before the dawn... take the drawings to the Guild of Foundries. Offer them forty percent of the operating yield. Do not let Danica see the casing joints. She will give them to Ignas, and that butcher will reverse the intake valves just to prove he understands the mechanics." "You aren't dying," Tihana said fiercely, closing her fingers tightly over the blue chalk mark, sealing his design against her pulse. "You hear me? You survived my father's war. You survived Danica's pride. You don't get to die on my table." A faint, exhausted smile curved the corner of his lips. "You're very loud when you aren't pretending to be an idiot." "I can be much louder." She gathered the woolen blanket, tucking it firmly under his chin. "I'm going to light the blast furnace. The residual heat will dry the air and keep your chest from congesting further. Rest. Just rest." She turned toward the coal chute, her spine stiff, the blueprint burning like brand iron in her palm. A sharp crash echoed from the street side of the ironworks. The high, arched windows along the upper clerestory shattered in an explosion of leaded glass. Two heavy glass jugs wrapped in burning rags sailed through the darkness, trailing arcs of thick, black turpentine smoke. They struck the wooden drying racks twenty feet from Rytis’s cot. The fuel detonated instantly, throwing a wall of orange fire across the foundry floor.

The Ironworks