Clankers were groaning mechanical monsters, covered in armour and propelled by eight iron legs. Hideously uncomfortable to ride in and a nightmare to the artificers who had to keep them going, they were humanity's main defence against the enemy. A clanker could carry ten soldiers and their gear, and defend them with catapult and javelard. But without power it was just dead metal, so a controller had to work perfectly, all the time.

Had she made a terrible blunder? Removing the hedron, Tiaan inspected it carefully. Dark needles of rutile formed a tangled mass inside the crystal. It seemed perfect. There were no visible flaws, nor had it been damaged, yet it had failed. She had no idea why.

There was no one to ask. The old master controller-maker, Crafter Barkus, had died last year. What notes he'd made on a lifetime's work were almost unintelligible, and the rest of his knowledge had died with him. Tiaan had learned everything he'd cared to teach her, and had made small but useful improvements to controllers, some of which had been adopted at other manufactories. However, at twenty she was too young to rise from artisan to crafter. The manufactory was sorely in need of someone with greater experience.

Through the door her fellow workers were talking among themselves, no doubt about her. Tiaan felt oppressed by their knowing looks, their unsubtle judgments and pointed jokes about not having done her duty. A twenty-year-old who had never been with a man – there had to be something wrong with her. It was not said meanly, more in puzzlement, but it hurt just the same.

There's nothing wrong with me! she thought angrily. I just haven't met the right one. And not likely to, among the misfits and halfwits here.

Two of the prentices sniggered, looked up at her cubicle then guiltily bent over their grinding wheels. Flushing, Tiaan hurried out of the workshop. She wove her way through the warren of clerks' benches, past the clusters of tiny offices, the library and the washing troughs, then between infirmary and refectory and out through the wall into the main part of the manufactory.