The back end of Aethelburg's pneumatic freight yard was a labyrinth of thick steam and cold brass. The danger wasn't theft, but surveillance: every thirty seconds, a main regulating valve would open with a dry clack, releasing a jet of steam to clear the air. These valves were fitted with detection lenses to spot intruders.
Elara Finch was incongruously elegant in this environment, her emerald green shawl the only bright color in the industrial night. Lyall had returned to his dark smith's uniform, his new travel gauntlet fitted to his forearm lighter but strangely more sensitive.
"Don't breathe too heavily near the Class Four regulators, Lyall," Elara whispered, sheltering behind a cable spool. "The sensors don't read heat; they read micro-fluctuations in air pressure."
Lyall closed his eyes, focusing not on the Nexium, but on the air itself. He felt the pressure shifting, the city breathing. His entire body became a manometer.
Clack! The nearby valve opened. Lyall felt the pressure drop before the steam was visible. He pulled Elara against the brick wall. The lens swept past their position and moved on.
"You learn quickly," Elara commented.
They slipped into a long tank wagon destined for mining operations. The entry was tight.
"We must be underneath, beneath the chassis," Elara instructed. "Aerial sweeps only target the surface. The danger comes from up there." She pointed at the sky, where the headlights of Ducal Aerostats streaked like threatening stars.
The journey was an ordeal of force and silence. Crammed into the narrow space beneath the wagon, the noise of the wheels on the rails and the constant hiss of the pneumatic lines was deafening.
Elara leaned close to his ear. "Vane's Mother-Pump is not his only weapon. He uses the extraction to fund his private army and to map the purest Nexium flows. He has hijacked parts of the rail line controls for his own benefit."
A few hours later, as they crossed a desolate plain, the pneumatic tension rose. Lyall felt the danger before he heard it. The Nexium screamed a warning at him.
"Something is coming," he said, his voice low. "Loud. Too fast for a freight train."
Elara peered through a gap. "A Magnate surveillance Aerostat. They are scanning the convoy. They're looking for mass anomalies."
Lyall felt the Aerostat's scanner sweep along the wagon.
"Our weight is normal, but Vane's systems are unpredictable," Elara explained. "We must create a distraction, a pressure spike to mask everything. Look at the wagon ahead."
On the roof of the coal wagon preceding them, a master valve of the main line pulsed softly.
"It controls the locomotive's feed," Elara said. "If you force it open sharply, it will create a spike. But you must do it without touching it."
This was the exercise he had failed a hundred times: manipulating the Néxium from afar. Lyall closed his eyes, felt the coolness of his new gauntlet. He ignored the brass and focused on the Air the omnipresent flow. He extended his hand, projecting his intention, asking the pressure to do the work.
A sharp pain hit his forehead, the same discordant scream he had felt in the pipe joint, but this time, it came from within him. Clang!
The valve on the wagon ahead burst open violently, releasing a column of white steam and a high-intensity hiss. The locomotive slowed for a moment. The Néxium in the air became chaotic, a perfect mask for the Aerostat's scanner.
Elara offered a faint smile. "Good. You succeeded. But it nearly broke you. Your gift is a brute force, Lyall."
The Aerostat passed and continued its route.
At dawn, the train stopped. The land beneath them was dead.
They emerged from their hiding place. Lyall was struck by the contrast. Aethelburg was a city of oils and living brass; the Domain of Cinders was a place of fractured rock and blackened, oxidized brass. The sky was grayer, the wind colder.
A few miles away, Vane's extraction fortress dominated the landscape: a black, angular mass, architecture that sought not pneumatic elegance, but mechanical domination. Dozens of massive pipes plunged into the ground.
"We are here," Elara said, adjusting her shawl. "The heart of the beast. Now, we are no longer fugitives. We are spies. Lyall, remember who you are. You are the witness."
Lyall looked at the fortress. He no longer felt the pain of the forge, but a cold determination, forged by betrayal. It was time to meet Merikh Silas Vane.