Wynn’s crew finished the last tasks without ceremony and walked out through the main entrance. Aestrith heard the door close and the corridor outside go quiet, which was the signal that meant she had the foundry to herself.

She moved to the cast table and ran her eyes across the current batch, checking for what needed attention before she started.

The ceiling beams had gone darker in the weeks since the first pour, each cycle adding another layer to what was already there.

She had stopped noticing the smell of iron and hot stone about a week after she moved into the citadel, the same way she had stopped noticing the smell of the Badlands when she was crossing it. It was just what a place smelled like.

On the far side of the room, lined against the wall below where the new beam assembly was resting, there were six rough iron cylinders.

Each one was about two feet long, thick-walled, with a hole bored through the center.

Nothing about them said what they were meant to become. They looked like pipes left over from something the foundry had already finished.

Tam came through the secondary corridor door with the book under her arm.

She always looked around the room first, which Aestrith had noticed as a habit from the beginning.

Her eyes went to the v3 engine components spread out in order along the floor, more of them than v2 had required.

The new design included a separate condenser vessel the size of a medium barrel, currently set apart from the main cylinder and waiting to be connected.

Then Tam’s eyes moved to the iron cylinders against the far wall and stayed there a beat longer than anything else.

"What are those?" she asked.

Aestrith was already at the cast table. "Tubes for a project he’s working on." She did not look up.

Tam was quiet for a moment, turning that over.

Then she came to the cast table and set the book on the bench without asking anything else about the cylinders.

"Your pipe is on the floor beside the lamp," Aestrith said. "The inner rod is next to it."

Tam found them.

The outer pipe was standard foundry parts, four inches in diameter and a foot long.

The inner rod was narrower, slightly shorter than the pipe’s length.

"It’s like he explained it to you," Aestrith said.

"I’ll rotate the pipe. You keep the rod without touching it no matter where it goes."

Tam looked at the pipe for a moment, then slid the rod inside it.

She let the pipe go with one hand and started to control the pipe through magnetism.

The rod drifted inside the pipe.

Then it slipped.

A faint tap.

"Again," Aestrith said.

Tam tried again.

The rod floated for several seconds before tapping again when Aestrith turned the pipe forty-five degrees.

Tam corrected quickly.

"It’s not the rod that’s moving," Tam said. "Or it is, but the problem is I lose track of the rod when the pipe moves."

"What does the book say about reference points?"

"It doesn’t, directly. There’s a passage about stable vectors versus moving targets. I think it works here."

"Try again."

They tried the pipe rotation for ten minutes.

Tam succeeded on roughly half the attempts, the shorter rotations, the ones obvious enough.

She failed when Aestrith changed the direction without warning.

The rod would tap the pipe and Tam would exhale, in both frustration and effort.

"Why this is so hard..." Tam said.

"Because you just barely awakened," Aestrith said. "I’m surprised you can even succeed once at all."

She set the pipe down and moved to the cast table.

They needed stabilization before they cooled past the right point.

Aestrith increased the gravity pressure, a long, even compression across the full batch.

The pressure expanded over the material from above and around with steady precision. She had already done this exact task enough times to become a habit.

Tam stayed quiet through it.

"I can feel yours," Tam said after a moment.

Aestrith kept the pressure on. "Can you."

"Not, um, what you are doing. But the energy coming out from you?"

She paused.

"It’s like you are radiating it."

"I can’t feel anything from you."

"Is that bad?"

"No... probably not. You are just too fresh." Aestrith said.

"F-Fresh?"

Aestrith released the pressure and looked at the batch.

The result was clean and even.

She stepped back from the table.

"Try the blocks now."

The two blocks were on the bench, identically shaped, their surfaces still undifferentiated.

Tam went to them and held both hands near each one in turn, moving slowly.

She frowned.

"This one is fine," she said, indicating the right one.

"Yes. I’ll shuffle them." Aestrith had Tam turn around and did so, "Try again."

Tam moved her hands back to them and stayed longer.

"I keep thinking this one is wrong and then it isn’t."

She tried the right one again and returned to the left.

"I can’t tell. They feel the same."

"Keep trying, until you can be sure of it."

"Do you think I’ll be able to?"

"Eventually," Aestrith said. "It’s already impressive enough what you are doing."

Tam straightened and looked at the blocks, then at the pipe still on the floor.

"Um, about the lord," she said. "During the tests yesterday he barely looked up from the ledger."

"Sounds right," Aestrith said.

"Does he always do that?"

"When he’s listening."

Aestrith crossed her arms and leaned against the bench.

"The more he stares at his ledger, the more seriously he’s taking the problem."

Tam tilted her head.

"I thought he was just being fidgety."

"That too," Aestrith said. "But it’s also both."

Tam sat down on the bench.

She picked up the book without opening it, holding it against her chest.

For a moment, it looked like she was seriously considering if she should do it or not.

"What was your awakening like?"

She had a way to be direct. It could have come from growing up in the slums, or it might just be who she was.

Aestrith could not tell which.

"Mine didn’t go quietly," Aestrith said.

Tam looked at her.

"My sister thinks I’ve just been tired. I never told her what it actually was."

"Why not?"

She was quiet for a moment.

"I didn’t want her to be frightened. She already worries a lot. I didn’t want to give her one more thing."

Aestrith said nothing.

She thought about what it would have been like to have someone like this.

She did not say it.

"Is it better if they know?" Tam asked.

"Depends on the person," Aestrith said. "And whether knowing helps them or just frightens them."

"She’d be frightened," Tam said. "I think she’d get over it, but she’d be frightened first."

"Probably," Aestrith said.

Tam turned the book over in her hands.

"Does it ever smell different to you in here? Than everywhere else?"

The change in topic was abrupt enough to catch Aestrith off guard.

She looked at her.

"Every foundry smells the same," Aestrith said. "Iron and heat and whatever they burned there. You stop noticing it around the first week."

"That’s good...?" Tam said. "It is a really bad smell."

She turned the book over again.

"Maybe there is a power that can control how something smells?"

Aestrith made a sound that almost became a laugh.

"I don’t know," she said. "If there is, it’d really come in handy sometimes."

Tam looked up at her with a small, surprised expression. She seemed to find the answer funnier than she intended to show.

Then, a sound from outside the main door. Wynn’s crew coming back.

It had the distinct volume of multiple footsteps in the outer corridor, different from a single person moving through it.

Aestrith pushed off the bench.

Tam slid the book back under her arm.

"We continue tomorrow," Aestrith said.

"Um, the exercise again?"

"Yes. The blocks and the pipe."

They went out through the secondary corridor together.

Wynn’s crew came through the main door behind them.

Tam was already talking about the passage in the book and what she thought it meant.

Aestrith listened without answering yet.

The door to the secondary corridor closed.