Tiaan moved backwards to escape the fumes. The foreman did not understand. This was not a hundredth of what the controller was supposed to do in working a battle armoped, or clanker as everyone called them. And the crystal had hardly any aura. Something was badly wrong. She visualised another movement. Again the spasmodic frog kick. Frowning, Tiaan tried a third. This time there was no reaction at all, nor could she gain any from the other arms. The aura faded to nothing.

'The hedron has gone dead.' She plucked anxiously at her pendant. A single facet sparkled in the lamplight. 'I don't understand. What have they been doing with the clanker? Trying to climb a cliff?'

'It died not fifteen leagues from Tiksi!' snapped Gryste, taking out a rusty sword and slapping it on his thigh. He took pleasure in intimidating. 'And the last two controllers you made also failed. In the battle lines.'

Her skin crawled. No controller from this manufactory had failed in twenty years. 'W-what happened?' Tiaan whispered.

'No one knows, but two precious clankers were lost and twenty soldiers are dead. Because of your sloppy work, artisan.'

Groping for her stool, Tiaan sat down. Twenty dead. She was numb from the horror of it. She never made mistakes in her work. What had gone wrong? 'I'll… have to talk to one of the clanker operators.'

'One was torn apart by a lyrinx, another drowned. Don't know what happened to the third. What the scrutator will do when he hears…'

Tiaan shivered inside. 'Do you have the other controllers?' she asked in a small voice.

'How could I?' he snarled. His tongue was stained yellow from chewing nigah, a drug the army used to combat cold and fatigue. That explained the spicy smell. Perhaps the garlic was an attempt to disguise it. 'The first clanker was taken by the enemy, the second swept down the river. This controller is from the third. We would have lost it too, had it ever reached the battlefront. Gi-Had has gone down to Tiksi to find out what went wrong. The whole manufactory is going to suffer for your incompetence.'