‘And no doubt there will be a need for workers to help with construction?’ enquired the Queen. ‘The young ones, in particular, who may not be so interested in staying in the mines, but nevertheless want a good solid job with plenty of metal and hammering involved? We are still dwarfs, after all.’

Afterwards the Queen walked among her quite possibly loyal subjects and it was a grand perambulation, with little outbreaks of mail skirts and elaborately coiffed beards amongst certain of the dwarfs rushing shyly over to assure her of their fealty. As Vimes said afterwards, for that day at least she had won hands down, especially since a great many of the dwarfs she was talking to were already openly declaring themselves females who had been waiting for this moment for a very long time.

The evening before they were to leave Bonk, Moist wandered down to the railhead, idly pondering recent events. Well, he thought, the world has seen the footplate of Iron Girder and the Queen has been given her crown back and according to Commander Vimes the worst of the grags are either dead or behind bars.

At the makeshift station Iron Girder was being guarded by Nobby Nobbs and Fred Colon, who were both sound asleep. Iron Girder, however, wasn’t, although the kettle was barely simmering after a long day giving rides to the locals up and down the single track.

Moist tiptoed to the empty footplate and whispered, ‘What are you, Iron Girder?’ There was a moment of silence, then a shimmer as the wisps of steam drifted up into the night air above the locomotive and a voice breathed into his brain, soft and warm and somehow damp.

‘My, oh my, Mister Lipwig, you are the smart one, just as they say. I am me. I am Iron Girder. But all it takes is for people to believe and I am no longer just an artefact put together by clever engineers. I am an idea, a something made of nothing, whose time has come to be. Some even call me “goddess”.’

Moist’s fleeting thought about traditional representations of goddesses in diaphanous nighties with maybe an urn or two was banished as the voice continued a little more sharply.

‘Am I not beautiful? And I tell you, my children will be even better! More sleek and more handsome and more powerful! Even now Mister Simnel is making my children for me. In time I will become ubiquitous, part of the landscape which is ennobled by my fleeting passage. I hear the worship every day that tells me that I am power personified and those who think to oppose me and put out my fire will find themselves thwarted, and swiftly. I, Mister Lipwig, I will rule on the up line and I will rule on the down line.’