She sat astride the new machine’s back and rested her hands on two bony protuberances either side of its head. Stand, she thought, and the machine raised itself on several stone legs. It shook beneath her, the vibrations travelling up her thighs and into her stomach. It gave a strange sexual quality to her fear, and caused her old wounds to ache as if craving the knife, the blade, the arrow once again. Walk, she thought, and the machine took its first hesitant steps. They were strong. Its shaking stopped, but she could feel its inner workings throbbing beneath her: no heartbeat, but something that felt like a fire being stoked; no breathing, but gasps as gas was blown out and air sucked in. Turn, she thought, and the machine stood at the edge of the harbor, a pace away from tumbling into the water, and turned to face her Krotes.

The Mages watched. Even S’Hivez appeared to be smiling.

Lenora sensed the power at work beneath her. This was not just a thing of stone and flesh and blood, it was also imbued with the Mages’ magic, awash with a deadly potential that she had yet to realize. She wondered what it would do when she sent further commands, and the possibilities were thrilling. Give fire, she thought, and a ball of flame formed from one of the machine’s mouths. She held it there, its roaring echoed by the gasps from the assembled warriors. Then she turned and flung the fire far out over the sea, watching it arc down and then splash into the water. It seemed to burn even as it sank, and for a few seconds the whole harbor’s surface glowed from beneath.

My gods, she thought, what have you created?

Lenora turned the machine around and stood on its back, two body-heights above the ground and elevated so that she could see right across Conbarma’s waterfront. All the surviving Krotes were here now—almost fifty of them—and the Mages, and they were all watching her. She felt the power in that, and smiled.

Angel smiled back.

“There’s work to be done!” she cried. “More machines to be built by our Masters. More preparations to make. The sun has fled our Mages’ power, scared and cowardly, and the twilight it’s left behind will be filled with the death-cries of Noreela. This is your time, Krotes, the time you have lived for from the moment you were born.” She paused, looked down at the head of the machine with its mad eyes and slavering mouths. “I once saw the shores of Noreela awash with blood, and that memory has always been bitter, because the blood was my own. Now it’s time to stain the land again, but this time with other blood. Noreela will fall, there’s no doubt of that. It’s the manner of that fall I so look forward to seeing.”