Master Pye had returned immediately with his apprentices; the smoke of their forges had appeared within days of the fight at Gilson’s Hole, and now they were casting metal. He felt the lack of Duke and Edmund, away with the emperor and the army, but he had absorbed all the staff of six master bell-casters and they were fine young men and women, and with a dozen of his older younglings, he was hard at work. He had Master Landry, the best bell-maker in all Alba, at his side, to supervise the casting.

In the next yard, sixty out-of-work millers learned how to use spoke shaves while a dozen carpenters under a journeyman knocked up shave-benches from planks and firewood.

“Ye want six hundred wheels?” the wheelwright master, Master Pearl, complained. “Blessed Saint Thomas! Is this on top o’ yesterday’s order?”

Mistress Anne Bateman, now Lady Anne, and Becca Almspend, soon to be Lady Lachlan, stood in the muddy yard, their overgowns filthy to the ankle, each carrying wax tablets covered in dense columns of markings. “Yes, master,” Lady Anne said. “Six hundred more wheels.”

“I dinna ha’e the wood,” he protested.

“Buy it,” Almspend snapped. “We are paying.”

“Blessed Trinity. Lady, there’s no more good board lumber to be had . . .” He shook his head.

“If I find you the lumber . . . ?” Lady Anne said.

“Then I need some loons to work it!” the northerner shouted. “By the cross o’ Christ, madam!”

“Find them,” Almspend said. “Stop all work on any other project.”

“I ha’e that already!” he protested.

“In the city. The queen orders it. No wheel is to be built for any reason, nay, not even for the queen’s carriage or a baby’s pram, until these wheels are completed and these wagons built.”

The wheelwright looked at them for a moment. Then he crossed his arms.

“Fine,” he spat.

“Master.” Lady Anne put a hand on his arm. “We are in a fight to the finish, and just now, that fight is as likely to be won by wheelwrights as by swordsmen and magisters.”

He thought about that a moment, and a smile lit his face. “Well, that’s bra’ly put,” he admitted. “I’ll do wha’ I can.” He paused. “Jesus.” He bowed his head at the name, piety, and blasphemy mixed in a single gesture. “Wha’ in the de’il’s name is Pye doin’? Consortin’ wi’ daemons? That’s the stink o’ hell!”

Indeed, the sulphur reek rolled across the wheelwright’s yard like a cloud of poison.

“He’s making the cargo,” Almspend said. “You make the wheels. Oh, and all of your apprentices are seconded to the royal army. As of now.”

“By all that’s holy!” the master complained. “But . . .”

“War,” said Lady Anne. “Send your people in groups of ten to the Order of Saint Thomas for inoculation against the plague.” She handed him a pass bearing the royal seal.