Free Empire in Black and Gold by Adrian Tchaikovsky Page A

more than anything that might happen to her in Helleron.
    She tidied her crumpled robes. She could not give up now. She would just have to find him and tell him. There was no more to it than that.
    Traditionally the houses of Collegium’s richest and most privileged citizens were ranged up against the Great College itself. Perhaps it was considered inspiring to watch the students prepare for the governance of tomorrow’s world. Besides, many of the great and the good were current or past College Masters, and probably felt at home close by.
    There was, however, one straggle of buildings not favoured by either the great or the good, and that was the wing housing the Halls of Artifice. For the furnace burned day and night, and the air above was ahaze with smoke and steam, while the immediate neighbourhood smelled of oil, molten metal and burning chemicals. Anyone trying to sleep anywhere near the Halls would need earplugs, and few of Collegium’s industrialists relished being reminded of the source of their wealth when they opened their shutters. Instead the housing round about was home for lowly College staff and students who could afford no better.
    Stenwold arrived at the main portal leading to the Halls of Artifice and gazed at the curving line of workshops and smithies stretching away in front of him, remembering. They had added two new buildings since he had made his own prentice pieces here. Meanwhile two decades more of grime had settled on the hard-edged stonework around him. Forget the politics, the arts martial, the philosophy and history, here was the engine that had driven Collegium since the revolution which had ended the Bad Old Days. This was the hub that made the Beetle city great: not fighters, not schemers, not tatty mystics, but makers . And Stenwold was not alone in possessing this surname. Amongst his industrious nation the names of Maker, Smithy and Wright were as common as dirt.
    He went inside, his clean robes already flecked with soot and ash, and swept past the porter with a nod, passing on through clamouring hall after hall, lit glowing red by furnaces, clogged with steam, until he finally located Totho.
    With the excitement and distraction of the Games so close no ordinary student could be expected to be working today. But artificers were an odd breed. Totho was not the only one of them at work in the machine-heavy confines of the workshop. The few others were all true-bred Beetle-kinden, with a single Tarkesh Ant standing out bleach-pale amongst them. They were all bound together by their dedication to their craft. Among them Stenwold recognized an artisan’s son and the daughter of a prominent silk merchant hard at work, each absorbed in some private mechanical dream. Totho was no different, as he stood hunched over a pedal-lathe, staring through dark goggles and sheets of sparks, as he machined a section of metal into shape.
    Stenwold approached him, but did not distract the youth from his task. There were half a dozen mechanisms already lying on the bench beside him, all seemingly versions of the same artefact, and all meticulously detailed. Stenwold had heard how good Totho was at his chosen business. It was a shame, then, that the lad was a poor halfbreed and an orphan. If he had come with a finer provenance the word his masters would have used of him was ‘great’. Collegium had spent centuries in the pursuit of freedom for all, opportunity for everyone, and if Totho had been in any other city he would have been a slave at worst, or at best an unskilled labourer. Here in Collegium he had acquired scholarship and skills, but the weight of his ancestry was like a chain about his ankles. He had all the written rules on his side, and all the unwritten ones working against him.
    Stenwold picked up one of the finished items to inspect. It was a tube about as big as his fist, and he could see there was some manner of pump within it, but the precise purpose of it eluded him. Totho glanced at him