‘One moment.’ Kosh called back the guard, who approached only after Matil’s nod. She muttered to him and passed him something, then bent to unbundle her own weapon.

‘May I see?’

‘Afterwards.’

The guard had reached the stacked barrels. He thumped a bolt into the topmost, its fletching stripped. Instead, a set of long, fabric tassels of various colours flowed from it, dancing on the wind.

Foss stirred. ‘I’ll be.’

Chel stared at the flapping tassels, mesmerized. ‘A wind-marker. Like Whisper.’

Kosh had extracted her crossbow and was kneeling, fiddling with something on its upper edge.

‘I forget she spent time with the old girl,’ Foss said, his voice tinged with melancholy. For a moment, they rested in silence, each ambushed by their own memories of their departed friend.

Kosh lifted, sighted and fired. The bolt was a blur, a black smear over the plaza. It struck the breastplate with a crunch, slamming it back against the barrel, the dark fletching jutting from the ragged hole in the neck of the swan.

Matil’s mouth was open. ‘Gods …’

Kosh stood, beaming, her cheeks flushed, the crossbow cradled in her arms. She looked almost girlish in her proud delight. ‘You see,’ she said, to Matil or to the world, ‘it has an adjustable sight, placed over the prod, which allows the shooter to see their target even at flatter elevations.’

‘Gods …’

‘The mechanism can’t really be improved from here, but I’d like to concentrate on the construction, test out lighter materials and try to reduce the carry weight without sacrificing power. Efficient and robust construction is really the key, and I was thinking of separation into modules, so it could be stowed in the wet, or better yet some kind of replaceable—’

‘My armour!’

The house guard had separated the breastplate from the barrel and approached, funereal, the stricken plate in his hands.

‘My … armour …’ Slowly, Matil’s gaze returned to Kosh. If before it had been curious, now it was reverent. ‘You made this?’

‘This? Yes. Yes, I did. Of course, the skeleton was cannibalized from other—’

‘Can you make more like it?’

‘Like it? This is a mere prototype, not something to replicate. My new design—’

‘How fast can you make more?’

‘Very fast. I am extremely efficient. I could make as many as three or four in a week.’

Matil’s smile was tinged with mania. ‘Can you instruct others? If you had the run of the workshops, and our artificers, could you instruct them?’

‘You must understand, increasing those under instruction is lost production time, and I could really be—’

‘We have twenty artificers in these workshops, and more across the city. Would, of course, that we had more. How fast can you build bows?’