Harry King was rumbling on as they emerged back into the open: ‘It’s a bugger! Now they’re free, you can’t get the golems! Ask your missus! They’re all off doing landscape gardening and suchlike daisy rubbish, and I reckon I’m paying every human ironworker in the damn city double the odds, and only twenty-one of them heavy boys. It’s such a shame, such a shame.’

‘I don’t know, Harry, you seem to be moving phenomenally fast.’

Harry nudged Moist and said, in a conspiratorial tone, ‘I’ll have you dumped in the river if you tell anybody this, but I’m loving it! I mean, most of my life has been, not to put too much of a fine point on it, shit, honest to goodness shit, not to mention of course piss, which has also been a very good friend to me, but you see all that is just moving stuff about, not actually making something. And it gets better because, you see, it’s something me and the Duchess can talk about in polite company. Oh, of course, I’ll still be maintaining the night-soil business and all of that … it is, after all, my bread and butter, so to speak, which, to tell you the truth, is more like steak and all the trimmings nowadays, but right now my heart is in the iron. And who can say that ain’t beautiful, Mister Lipwig? I mean, daffodils, well, I quite like them, but look at the sheen on the steel, the sweat on the men; the future being made one hammer blow at a time. Even the slag is beautiful in a way.’

Iron Girder passed by on her everlasting journey around the compound and Harry said, ‘What we need is the right class of poet.’ He flung out a hand towards the admirers with their notebooks and all the others who clung to the railings. ‘Look at them all! They’re looking for miracles. And you know what? They’ll get them.’

It started to rain, but the onlookers, especially the train spotters, with their very useful clothing, just stood there, watching Iron Girder kick up a mist into the air.

It seemed to Moist that for a moment Harry King was somehow different, even more alive than usual, and Harry, it had to be said, was pretty vital in any case. And now Harry King, Cess Pit Man, was metamorphosing into a National Treasure.

Bedwyr Beddsson tried to get his boots off. After a night in the mines it was amazing what you found in your boots, some of it alive. When the boots were off, not without a struggle, he took the harness off Daisy the pit pony and watched her sniff the clean air and canter into the little field near the entrance to the mine. It did your heart good to see her. There were times when Bedwyr would have liked to do the same thing. His mother had told him, you can’t change your stars, meaning, presumably, this is your life and you have to live it. Now, as he stepped inside his living quarters, he wondered if Tak might let him try again.