Shaken, Galar Baras stepped back. He bowed to Henarald – the gesture unseen by the lord, who now sought to embrace the pile of slag with both arms, slipping down to his knees upon the frozen ground beside the fountain’s wall – and then departed the garden.

When such a man loses his way, we are all left feeling lost. We flee, and yet carry with us something of the infection, jarred into imbalance, reeling in our own minds like a drunkard.

He found himself in a broad corridor, a grand causeway with niches upon each wall, in which stood mundane objects fashioned from metal. They marked a progression, from copper and tin to bronze and iron, from cast to wrought, poured to drawn and folded, an evolution of metallurgy, as if inviting the notion of advancement with the ease of taking a step, and then another, and another. The intention, he well understood, was one of triumph, of wild energies tamed, subjugated. And yet, he now realized, not one object on display revealed the discarded leavings of its making: more than just slag and tailings, but also the bitter taste of the smoke from its forging, the stench of burned hair and flesh, the dusty surrender of wood and sap, streams and rivers fouled, the countless lives altered, for good or ill, by industry’s manic zeal.

Despondent, he walked slowly down the corridor until he came to the last niche, which was empty. This vacant space announced the birth of Hust iron. The tale of that absence was one he’d always thought both unlikely and perverse. No object made of that metal, it was said, welcomed the stripping away of function, of value and labour, the reduction to a curiosity, an offering solely for display. The tale was well known of the moment when a Hust sword, bared, was set in the niche. Its howl was heard throughout the estate, and it had been unceasing, deafening. Until recently, Galar Baras had thought the story apocryphal.

Now, he halted opposite the empty niche and stared into the poignant absence.

It had been midday, snow wet upon the ground, when at last the officers of the Hust Legion were fully assembled at the wagons. Amid the sharp unease there was a current of anticipation among the prisoners. If freedom had a cost, and if that charge was the cruel gift of Hust weapons and armour, then this was the moment of consummation, and bound to the notion of freedom there was power. Men and women who had lived in cages, they were the starved before the feast.